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BY SAME AUTHOR: 


THE LAW OF LOVE, AND LOVE AS A LAW; 


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CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 


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BY SAME AUTHOR: 


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WITH ILLUSTRATIVE DIAGRAMS, AND A METHOD FOR 
BLACKBOARD TEACHING. 



BY 



MARK HOPKINS, D.D., LL. D. 

AUTHOR OP "EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY," "LECTURES ON MORAL 
SCIENCE," "THE LAW OF LOVE," ETC. 







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REVISED EDITIO. 




NEW JOR 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



1886. 

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CONSCIOUSNESS. 

CONSCIENCE. 

SELF-APPROBATION. 



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Copyright, 1878, 
By SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG AND COMPANY 

Copyright, 1886, 
By CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANI. 



CONTENTS. 

LECTURE I. 
The Place of Man 1 

LECTURE II. 
The Body 26 

LECTURE III. 
Mind. — Intellect. — The Reason 50 

LECTURE IV. 
The Reason. — The Senses, External and Internal . 73 

LECTURE V. 

Recapitulation. — Consciousness. — Theories, Be- 
liefs, and Practical Results 98 

LECTURE VI. 

The Representative Faculty. — Control of the 
Will over the Mental Current . . . .121 

LECTURE VII. 

The Elaborative Faculty, and its Processes. — Con- 
cepts AND THEIR PROPERTIES 145 

LECTURE VIII. 

Reasoning. — Analogy and Experience. — Demonstra- 
tion and Probable Reasoning. — Inferring and 
Proving. — Systemization 172 



IV CONTENTS. 

LECTURE IX. 

The Sensibility. — A Good. — Beauty. — The Lu- 
dicrous. — The Affective Reason . . . .194 

LECTURE X. 

Intellect, Sensibility, and Will. — The Practical 
Reason. — Personality, Causation, Freedom, Obli- 
gation, Merit and Demerit, Rights, Responsibil- 
ity, Punishment .221 

LECTURE XL 

Body ; Soul ; Spirit. — Spontaneity ; Freedom. — The 
Natural ; Supernatural ; Miraculous. — Conduct ; 
Obligation ; A Supreme End ; Character. — The 
Highest Good; The Whole Good; The Law of 
Limitation 248 

LECTURE XII. 

Original Objects. — Action and its Consequences. 

— Philosophy of Action from the Constitution. 
No Christian Moral Philosophy. — Choice. — Su- 
preme Ends. — Supreme Principle of Action. — 
Conscience. — A Nature and a Necessity after 
Choice. — Moral Affections. — Moral Emotions. — 
Religious Emotions. — The Law of Construction. 

— The Law of Conduct. — Test of Progress. — 
Position of Man as a Worshipper .... 275 

Appendix 302 

Explanation of the Diagram 306 



PREFACE. 



As compared with their delivery the following 
lectures are published at a special disadvantage. 
For their best effect they need blackboard and 
drawing facilities, like those of the Lowell Insti- 
tute. Through those the work done was retained 
and kept before the audience ; each subject waa 
commented upon as it found its place in the sys- 
tem and on the board, and thus the system grew 
before the eye as well as before the mind, till it be- 
came for both a completed whole. This gave a 
freshness and interest that could have been had in 
no other way. 

The substance of the lectures was preserved in 
a phonographic report. This, it was found, would 
be of so much aid in writing them out that the 
form of lectures and the phraseology appropri- 
ate to them have been retained, though the refer- 
ences to the board were so many and of such a 
character that a recast of many portions has been 
found necessary. As read, the lectures would 



VI PBEFACE. 

Bcarcely convey a correct impression of the extent 
to which the board was used. 

The method of teaching an abstract subject 
other than Mathematics through the eye has long 
been practiced in Logic, but until recently has 
been chiefly confined to that. So far as I know, 
the first to apply it generally and with success 
was my friend Mr. Dickinson of the Westfield 
Normal School. This is not object-teaching. 
That consists in showing the object itself, but this 
is the teaching of relations, which are invisible, 
by means of things that are visible. This facili- 
tates the holding of abstract subjects steadily be- 
fore the mind, and I cannot but hope a good deal 
from it in the way of popularizing studies of this 
kind. 

Perhaps it was not wise to attempt the discus- 
sion of so many and such disputed points within a 
compass so limited, but an outline has its advan- 
tages for both the teacher and the learner, and 
that is all that this claims to be. Besides, meta- 
physical points are capable of being stated briefly, 
and are often best seen when thus stated. Like 
that Genius in the Arabian Nights who was con- 
fined in a jar drawn out of the sea by a fisher- 
man, they are capable of being brought into a 



PREFACE. Vll 

*ery narrow compass, as well as of expanding into 
proportions vast, misty, and mighty. 

The method of the work is constructive, and so, 
except as a positive and progressive system must 
be, not critical or controversial. It gives a LAW 
op Construction for the universe so far as we 
know it, by which the whole, including man, is 
brought into one system. It gives a LAW OP 
Conduct for man that grows out of the construc- 
tion ; and also a Law of Limitation that 
enables us, as is shown in " The Law of Love," to 
carry the Law of Conduct into the details of life. 

In connection with this method the Intuitions 
are naturally divided into three kinds, and are 
presented in an order different from that gener- 
ally followed. Part of them are also seen to be 
complex, and in connection with their complexity, 
systems that have been supposed to be opposed 
are readily reconciled. 

In following out the system, and in turning 
irom books to the investigation of the subjects 
themselves, I have found myself differing more 
frequently and more widely from those who are 
regarded as authorities than I expected. Such 
difference will be found not only in regard to the 
nature and place of the Intuitions, but in regard 



V1U PREFACE. 

to Consciousness, to Perception, to various doc- 
trines of Logic, to the central position of Choice 
and to the nature and necessity that precede and 
follow that as they are related to Choice and to 
each other. The work will, therefore, be found 
to differ from others, both in its Method and its 
System. If these are correct, errors of detail will 
be of minor consequence. 

Whatever may be its fate, I shall be content if 
this work shall awaken in the community a wider 
interest in the study of man, — of man in his 
unity so marvellously complex, as he is related to 
the universe around him, to his fellow-men, and 
to God. 

N. B. The diagrams which will be found in 
the following Lectures are to be read from the 
bottom upwards ; and the reader will bear in mind 
that, in the use of the diagrams and of the black- 
board, the process is always that of starting with 
n common foundation and building up. 



AJS OUTLINE STUDY OF MA2ST. 



LECTURE I. 

THE PLACE OF MAN. 

Is it possible to present the most abstract and 
difficult questions of metaphysics so that they 
shall be interesting and profitable to a popular 
audience ? I think it is. I think so partly be- 
cause, as these questions naturally suggest them- 
selves to every man, so the elements for their 
solution are found in every man ; and partly from 
an experiment which I made here four years ago, 
and from my experience since. 

I was aware at that time that some of my lee* 
tures, especially those on the foundation of obliga- 
tion, would require more careful attention than 
could reasonably be expected from a popular au- 
dience; therefore, anticipating that the audience 
would be small, I consulted Mr. Lowell on the 
expediency of permitting, as had been my custom 
with classes in college, questions from the audi- 
ence. It did not seem to him expedient, and I 
have no doubt he was right. Then, being averse 
l 



2 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

to saying anything that could not be perfectly un- 
derstood, and seeing a blackboard behind me, I 
laid aside my manuscript and gave three or four 
lectures on the more abtruse points with the aid of 
that. This was thought to be a success, and I 
have so far followed the method since as to desire 
to test it further ; for if these studies can be popu- 
larized, it will be a public benefit. 

It will, then, be my first object in the following 
course to present this class of subjects so that 
they can be readily understood by any one who 
will give attention. I believe in no transcen- 
dental metaphysics which are not capable of be- 
ing communicated in good English, and of being 
understood by any man of good common sense. 

A second object will be to present man in his 
unity. Man is so complex, so many studies origi- 
nate from him, that he is seldom studied except 
in a fragmentary way. Anatomy, Physiology, 
Psychology, Logic, Morals, are studied separately, 
and with little reference to their relation to each 
j>ther. 

I shall also wish to present at different points 
views of my own which I think in some measure 
new, and not without importance. In one sense 
nothing on these subjects can be new. There can 
be no new elements, but the elements may be 
presented in new relations; they may be more 
carefully discriminated, and, perhaps, better ar- 
ranged. 



UNORGANIZED AND ORGANIZED BODIES. 3 

We pass, then, to the study of man. And first 
let us find his place. This we can do only as we 
separate man from other beings and objects. In 
making this separation I observe that all beings 
and objects that fall under our observation are 
divided into two great classes — they are either 
unorganized or organized. Let us look at some 
of the differences between these, most of which 
have been noticed by physiologists. 

Unorganized and organized bodies differ, first, 
in their origin. 

Organized bodies originate in a germ, a seed, 
a spore, a cell, in something that is itself organ 
ized. It is now generally, though not universally, 
conceded by naturalists that there is no such thing 
as spontaneous generation. Between life and or- 
ganization there is a relation of interdependence, 
as between the different parts of a circle. They 
imply each other in a way that seems to necessi- 
tate a simultaneous origin, and from a higher 
power. Organization could not first be without 
life, and life could have no means of manifestation 
without organization. It is said, indeed, that there 
is living matter that is not organized. It has been 
said that the amoeba is a mere mass of unorgan- 
ized jelly, but that is now disproved ; and the as- 
sertion that anything has life, or can be made to 
have it, that is not either organized or the product 
of organization, be it protoplasm or what it may, 
is a mere assumption. 



4 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

Unorganized and organized bodies differ, in the 
second place, in their composition. 

Unorganized bodies may be simple, haying no 
composition properly so called, but simply aggre- 
gation. They may have two or more elements. 
In organized bodies there are always three ele- 
ments, one of which is carbon. 

Unorganized and organized bodies differ, in the 
third place, in their structure. 

Organized bodies have cellular and vascular 
tissues. They consist of parts performing func- 
tions through which those parts are mutually re- 
lated to each other and to the whole. These parts 
cannot be wholes, while any part of a mass of sil- 
ver is as much a whole as the whole is. An arm 
is not and cannot be a whole in any such sense as 
that. In an organized body the parts are mutually 
related as means and ends. In an unorganized 
body there is no such relation. 

In the fourth place, unorganized and organized 
bodies differ in their mode of preservation. 

In unorganized bodies the individual is preserved 
as long as the species. In organized bodies the in- 
dividual perishes and the species only is preserved. 
In the one there is a growth and decay from ac- 
tivities within ; in the other there is no growth and 
no decay, and all changes are by the operation of 
agencies from without. There is simply aggrega- 
tion and disintegration by the action of external 
forces. In the one there is health and disease, in 
the other there is nothing of the kind. 



UNORGANIZED AND ORGANIZED BODIES. 5 

Once more, these bodies differ in their Motive 
Forces. 

In unorganized bodies certain general forces, as 
gravitation and cohesion and chemical affinity, are 
the forces that produce motion. But in organized 
bodies there is a force commonly known as Life, 
that coordinates the action of the parts with ref- 
erence to the end of the whole. This is a crucial 
test as between organized bodies and those that 
are not. In an unorganized body there is no end 
of the whole within itself, so that well-being or the 
reverse can be affirmed of it. 

There is also another such test that is worthy of 
attention as opposed to the efforts now made to 
identify the processes of crystallization with those 
of life. In all upbuilding by life there is first, not 
only a selection of the material, but a preparation 
of it, and then a placing of it where it is needed. 
Hence the movement of the material is from 
within outward, which is never the case under any 
lower force, and this movement is by a force which 
preserves the identity of the being while its ma- 
terials are changed. We have, then, as discrimi- 
nating the organic from the inorganic force, first, the 
preparation of the material ; second, its movement 
from within outward, or from the point where it is 
prepared to that where it is needed. This is the 
beginning of a reverse movement, of a new order 
of things in which the process is not by aggrega- 
tion or evolution or development, but by growth, 



6 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

And third, there is identity of the being with 
change of the material. 

I have thus mentioned the main differences be- 
tween unorganized and organized bodies. By 
these they are sufficiently distinguished. Now 
man is organized. 

Leaving, then, unorganized matter we pass on in 
our analysis of what we see around us and observe 
that organized bodies are divided into two great 
classes — Vegetables and Animals. These have 
much in common in those functions that are called 
organic, but they differ, — 

First, in their composition. 

For the most part they thus differ, though there 
are individual exceptions. For the most part ani- 
mal organizations consist of a greater number of 
elements. Nitrogen is added. In the vegetable- 
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon are always present, 
with little nitrogen. In the animal, nitrogen is 
more abundant. Hence animal substances may 
generally be distinguished by the peculiar smell, 
as of burnt feathers, which is produced by the 
burning of bodies which have nitrogen in them. 

Vegetables and animals differ, in the second 
place, in their structure. 

A vegetable has no muscles. It has no nerves 
or nervous tissue. 

They differ, again, in their mode of nutrition. 

Vegetables have the power, and animals have 



VEGETABLES AND ANIMALS. 7 

not, of obtaining nourishment from unorgan- 
ized matter. There are instances of vegetables, as 
the mushroom and certain parasitic plants that are 
nourished by matter that has been the product of 
organization, but there is no well established in- 
stance of an animal that is nourished by matter 
that has not been organized. This power of the 
vegetable to find its nourishment in unorganized 
matter is regarded by some as its great character- 
istic. Certainly it is the great function and use of 
the vegetable world to come between animals and 
unorganized matter, and to prepare materials for 
their nourishment and use. 1 

The great difference, however, between vegeta- 
bles and animals is, that animals have, and vege- 
tables have not, sensation and voluntary motion. 

We may not be able to discriminate between 
the sensitive plant and the animal. It is marvel- 
ous how Nature simulates in that which is lower 
that which is higher ; how she avoids abrupt and 
great transitions, and hence some say that there 
is no difference. It may be impossible for us to 
draw the line, but there is a line ; there must be. 
Either there is sensation or there is not. If there 
be sensation, it is an animal ; if there be not, it 
is a vegetable. It may be that God only knows 
where the line is, but there is a line, definite and 
fixed ; there is a point where you go over to an- 
other thing, wholly another thing, because, when 
sensation begins it is wnolly another thing. Cer- 

1 See Appendix A. 



8 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

tainly there is a point where there is no sensation, 
and certainly there is a point where there is sensa- 
tion, and if we may not be able to draw the line it 
yet exists, and it is a new thing, altogether different 
that comes in. And the same thing is true of vol- 
untary motion. The sensitive plant has motion, 
but anatomists say this is from irritability, and 
not from will. The motion is no more voluntary 
than that of the clouds. Here again there is a line 
whether we are able to discern it or not, a radical 
difference, a new thing that comes in — there is 
voluntary motion. These two make a difference 
heaven wide between the vegetable and the 
animal. 

Now man is an animal, and we next seek the 
difference, or differences between him and other 
animals. There are, indeed, those who think 
that man should not be classed as an animal; 
and if such classification must imply that he is 
nothing more, they are right. Man, as man, is 
not an animal. So far, however, as he has animal 
characteristics he may be classed as an animal, 
and if it cannot be shown that he has something 
more, the classification will be wholly correct. 

First, then, man differs from animals in certain 
Dhysical characteristics. He is the only animal 
that is clearly both two-handed and two-footed. 
Hence he is the only animal that is fitted for an 
erect posture. These two characteristics, — the 



ANIMALS AND MAN. . ^ 

release of the upper extremity from all use in 
locomotion, and his erect position, cause his rela- 
tions to Nature around and above him to be differ- 
ent from those of the animals. By the hand he 
conquers Nature, and by his erect position he 
studies the heavens. No animal can do either, 
Man i& also the only animal that has a chin. I 
believe that is so. I know that Dr. John Augus- 
tine Smith, with whom I studied medicine, used 
to say that ; and he said he always thought that 
when the chin was deficient, there was some defi- 
ciency in the upper story. 

Again, man differs from mere animals in cer- 
tain intellectual characteristics. 

Animals have no thought in the sense in which 
that word is now used. They have no insight 
properly, that is, no comprehension of the rela- 
tions of parts when parts are put together so as 
to make a complex whole. They may generalize 
faintly, but give no evidence of abstract ideas. 
They may know that a thing is white, but do 
not know whiteness. Nor is there any evidence 
that animals have either necessary or universal 
ideas in such a sense as to recognize them as 
necessary and universal. When an animal is 
driven into a corner, it is not probable that he 
knows it as an angle ; but if he does, he does not 
know, and cannot be made to know, that the 
three angles of every triangle must be equal to 
two right angles. Whether an animal knows that 



10 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN 

he is in space may be doubted, but he does not 
know that a body must be in space, nor that space 
must be infinite. Lacking thus those necessary 
ideas which constitute man rational, or at least 
without which he could not be rational, no ani- 
mal is capable of studying any science as such, 
or of any rational discourse. In connection with 
this it may be stated that man is the only animal 
that uses either articulate language or arbitrary 
signs as a means of intercommunication. 

In consequence of these physical and intellect- 
ual differences — and it is to be said that the 
physical differences would avail nothing without 
the intellectual — man has, and the animal has 
not, a capacity for progress in the race. Through 
written and spoken language man can avail him- 
self of the experience and improvements of the 
past. This animals cannot do. Each genera- 
tion begins where the previous one began, and 
runs the same round. The bee and the beaver 
build to-day, under the same conditions, as they 
djd four thousand years ago. If there are trans- 
mitted modifications of instinct it is only of those 
instincts which tend to the preservation of the 
individual, and of the race. 

In connection with his capacity for progress, 
and for possessing the whole earth, man is the 
only being that uses fire, or metals, or artificial 
clothing, or that invents and uses machinery. 
And what a marvelous difference does this make 



POWER TO PRODUCE REMOTE EFFECTS. 11 

in our day, this use of machinery ! In connection 
with this, too, man is the only being capable of 
buying and selling, of commerce, and of an inter- 
change of commodities. 

It is further in connection with the powers al- 
ready mentioned that man has the wish and the 
power to produce remote effects, — effects that 
are remote from himself both in space and in 
time. Man alone has this wish and power. The 
animal produces whatever effects it may produce 
through the agency of its muscles in the place 
where it is ; but man has the wish and the power 
to produce effects upon the other side of the globe. 
It is a great and distinguishing prerogative of 
man that he is able, in connection with those 
agencies which he can control, to cause his will 
to be felt over the globe and through indefinite 
periods of time. 

Whether man has emotions not from the moral 
nature different in kind from those of the brute 
it is impossible to say with certainty. I think he 
has. As he alone laughs, so I think he alone 
has the perception and feeling involved in that. 
As he is the only ridiculous animal, so I incline 
to think he is the only one that has a sense of 
the ridiculous. 

But whatever may be said of the emotions just 
mentioned I observe again that man differs from 
all mere animals in possessing a moral and relig- 
ious nature. 



12 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

I know there are those who say that the dog. 
with perhaps other animals, has a perception of 
moral relations ; and it must be admitted that, as 
in other cases of gradation, there is an appearance 
of something that approximates it, but is not 
it. The condition of a moral nature is personal- 
ity. It is something within in virtue of which 
the being becomes, or may become, subject to 
moral law, of which a brute knows nothing. He 
is governed by impulse and not by law. The 
same is true of worship. The brute has not the 
prerequisites for it, and to identify the feeling of 
a dog towards his master with that, shows an 
ignorance of its elements. God is properly an 
object of worship only as He has moral charac- 
ter, and the recognition of this must imply a 
knowledge of moral law, and of obligation under 
that law, of which the brute is incapable. Be- 
sides, true worship can be rendered only to a 
spiritual and invisible God, whereas the brute 
is incapable of being affected except through the 
senses. "Whom," says an apostle, "having not 
Been ye love." No animal can love a being it 
has never seen, or can love at all on the ground 
of moral and spiritual excellence. 

But as in passing from the vegetable to the ani- 
mal we found a single decisive test, so I think we 
may here. A number of tests have been proposed. 
Some have said that the distinctive difference be- 
tween man and the animals is the power of form- 



POWER OF CHOICE. 13 

ing general ideas, and of using general terms ; 
some that it is the power of abstraction, and 
others that it is the power of looking in upon him- 
self, and of so making himself the object of his con- 
templation as to become at once both subject and 
object. But to me it seems that the discriminat- 
ing difference is that man has the power to choose 
his own supreme end and the brute has not. A 
brute aces from impulse and is driven by its consti- 
tution to its end. It has no power to compare 
different motives and principles of action and to 
make one supreme. It has no power of choice 
with an alternative in kind, and so no true free- 
dom. It is not a being that is capable of contem- 
plating different possible ends of its being and of 
choosing or rejecting its true end, Man is such a 
being. Hence man has, and the brute has not, 
elements by which he may become a fool. A 
brute cannot be a fool. Only a man can be a 
fool. There are no elements in a brute by which 
he can be made a devil ; neither are there any by 
which he can be made an angel. But man cap 
become a fool, or a devil, or an angel. 

Thus, as I think, do we find man. He is broadly 
discriminated from all other beings; so broadly, 
that he properly belongs to a different order. 

Of man, aa thus found, we next inquire what 
his place is relatively to other beings. We say 
that he is higher than any other being. But by 



14 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

what test ? If the brute were to make the state- 
ment would he not say that he was higher ? Is 
there any proper test by which we can ascertain 
what is higher and what is lower ? 

Naturalists say that specialization is a test. 
We find in what are called the lower forms of 
organization that the functions, as of nutrition and 
of circulation, are performed without particular or- 
gans, and that, as the animal becomes higher, the 
organs are specialized, and each function has its 
own organs ; and it is generally true that as there 
is more specialization the animal comes to be 
higher. At the same time the specialization in the 
musquito, for instance, is as perfect as it can be 
anywhere. There is no more perfect adaptation or 
specialization in Nature that I know of than in the 
bill of the musquito. There is a larger amount of 
specialization in man, but the specialization itself 
is as perfect in the lower animals as in him. 

But we need a broader principle ; we need one 
by which we may judge of that which is higher or 
lower, not merely with respect to animals as they 
are related to each other, but with respect to the 
forces of Nature, the faculties of man and their 
products, and the whole structure of the universe. 
Such a principle, if there be one, must be that 
which gives its unity to the universe. The princi- 
ple is, that those forces, and forms of being, and 
faculties, and products, are lower, which are a 
condition for others that are conditioned upon 



CAUSE AND CONDITION. 15 

them. I believe that there is a great law of con- 
ditioning and conditioned, by which we may know 
what is higher and lower throughout the whole 
range of being. 

But here it will be necessary to say that I do 
not accept the doctrine adopted by both Hamilton 
and Mill, and also by some of our American 
writers, that there is no difference between a 
cause and a condition ; or that the condition of a 
thing is, in any proper sense, a part of the cause. 
Sir William Hamilton says, " By cause I mean 
everything without which the effect could not be 
realized." That is his definition of a cause. But 
a house could not be without materials of some 
kind of which to construct it ; and I ask you 
whether, in accordance with any proper meaning 
of that term, the materials are a part of the cause 
of a house, or whether they are simply a condition 
through which it becomes possible that the intelli- 
gent agency of the builder should be put forth and 
become a cause. The same may be said of the 
foundation of a house. Without a foundation a 
house cannot be, but the foundation is no part of 
the cause of the house. The earth could not be, 
we could not be, without space. Space is the con- 
dition of matter. I ask you whether you believe 
it is in any proper sense its cause. I therefore 
make a distinction at this point between a cause 
and a condition. It is a distinction which I think 
may De maintained, and which ought to be main 



16 AN 0U1LINE STUDY OF MAN. 

tained in the interest of both clearness of expres- 
sion and of thought. I say, then, that some things 
are the condition of other things ; that the law of 
conditioning and conditioned runs through God r a 
universe ; and that it is that by which we know, or 
may know, scientifically, that one thing is higher 
than another. 

Let us then see how this is with reference to the 
great forces by which the universe is controlled. 
I speak of forces, and for the present we must 
speak thus whatever may be true of the doctrine 
of the correlation of forces by which it is possible 
they may all be resolved into one. Indeed, it 
matters little for our purpose whether what we 
have been accustomed to call the great forces of 
Nature are really separate forces, or different modes 
of one force. Leaving this, then, let us suppose, 
according to the statement of the Bible and the 
nebular theory, that " In the beginning the earth 
was without form and void," — mere diffused, 
nebulous, chaotic, surging matter in space ; what 
would be the force which must act in order to 
bring this matter into such a condition that it 
might serve the purpose of a world ? Evidently it 
would be the force of Gravitation ; that is to say, it 
would be that force by which all matter tends to- 
wards all matter by a certain definite law. It 
would be necessary that such a force or mode of 
force should exist and apply itself to every particle 
of matter in order to its aggregation in such a way 



TWO ASPECTS OF MATTER. 17 

that it could become subject to the action of any 
other force or mode of force. Being thus the con- 
dition for the action of any other force we may set 
Gravitation down as the lowest and most universal 
of all the forces or forms of force. 

In matter as thus subject to this lowest and most 
universal law we find those two aspects of it that 
have set thinkers in opposition to each other as 
they have regarded one or the other of them ex- 
clusively. These are the aspect of necessity ; and 
that of being controlled with reference to an end. 
The necessity is apparently absolute since there 
can be nothing in matter to resist the force, and 
since its movements under this law can be math- 
ematically calculated. These movements would 
therefore seem to have not only the necessity that 
belongs to physical law as uniform, but that abso- 
lute necessity which is involved in mathematical 
relations. On the other hand, no evidence of free- 
dom can be greater than the control of force di- 
rected to an end : and that matter under the con- 
trol of this force is so directed there can be no 
doubt. And so these two aspects or faces of mat- 
ter under law have looked, one towards necessity 
and atheism, and the other towards freedom and 
God, and men have failed to see their reconciliation 
in the fact that absolute uniformity — even that 
which may be expressed by mathematical relations 
— may be the highest and most perfect result of 
an intelligent will working towards an end which 



18 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

could be best accomplished only in that way. 
These two aspects I refer to now because they are 
quite as prominent in this lowest law as in any 
other, and because they present themselves in 
every form of physical law. 

By gravitation matter is brought together, but 
simply as loose particles. That it may be service- 
able as matter now is, there must be a force which 
will unite the particles into separate bodies. 
What is this? It is the attraction of Cohesion. 
This exists between the particles of all bodies 
whether solid or fluid that can be defined or limited 
as separate bodies. This would give us a world 
made up of the different kinds of matter indiscrim- 
inately mixed, or with kinds separated as in crys- 
tallization. 

What force, then, is there by which such indis- 
criminate mixture may be avoided, and the varie- 
ties and combinations of matter as we now have 
them be given us ? It is Chemical Affinity, which 
is the next higher power as conditioned upon grav- 
itation and cohesion. Under this, also, as under 
gravitation, we have uniformities so perfect that 
they may be represented by mathematical for- 
mulae. 

We thus have the three great forces of inor- 
ganic matter in their order as lower and higher, 
each one of them being the basis of some form of 
physical science. Gravitation gives us Astronomy, 
with the laws of falling bodies ; Cohesion gives 



CRYSTALLIZATION. — VEGETABLE LIFE. 19 

us crystallography and portions of mechanics ; and 
Chemical Affinity gives us the now great science 
of Chemistry. These laws suffice to themselves. 
They would produce a permanent world and system 
of worlds, but these would be of no use except as 
a condition of a higher order. That higher order 
they anticipate and prefigure by producing through 
crystallization regular forms. In crystallization, 
and in crystals, through definite form, we find the 
lowest point of transition from inorganic to organic 
matter. Here again, too, we find matter con- 
trolled under the semblance of mathematical neces- 
sity with reference to ends, — the ends of beauty 
and of utility. Special mystery is supposed to be 
attached to the force that gives us organisms, but 
I do not see that it is more mysterious than that 
which gives us crystals. Indeed the whole mystery 
is given in any form of force apparently imper- 
sonal, whether it can be expressed by mathemat- 
ical formulae or not, that works so uniformly as to 
give what we call a law, and to seem necessitated, 
and yet that works in the interest of ends beyond 
itself, and that run up into spheres of which, re- 
garded as impersonal, it can know nothing. 

So these laws work, regarded as the condition of 
the manifestation and force w T hich is next above 
them. This is vegetable life. These laws being 
given, and working upon suitable materials, we 
have the condition on which vegetable life, what- 
ever that may be, can work. Without them veg- 
etable life could not be. 



20 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 



Again, having vegetable life given, mediating as 
it does between inorganic nature and animal life, by 
converting inorganic matter into food, by absorb 
ing superfluous carbon, and by giving out oxygen 
to supply the waste made by animals, we have the 
conditions, and the only conditions, on which ani- 
mal life could be produced and permanently main- 
tained. This then gives us our next higher force 
— Animal Life. 

But one higher force remains, that is, Rational 
or Spiritual Life. That an animal life is a neces- 
sary condition of this in all beings, is not claimed 
or supposed. But in man it is. Man exists in 
his present state only as the laws and forces 
already mentioned are given as a part of himself, 
and to be subjected under the force of a Rational 
and Free Will. This gives us Man. 

These forces, their products and relations, may 
be presented on the board thus, 



Man. 



Animal Life. 



Vegetable Life. 



Chemical Affinity. 



Cohesion. 



Gravitation. 



MAN. 21 

In this figure we see the different steps of the 
creation as it went up, taking with it all that was 
below, and adding something at every step. At 
first we have only Gravitation, then Cohesion; but 
every particle that coheres also gravitates. Then 
we have Chemical Affinity; but every particle 
united by that also coheres and gravitates, and 
so on upward till we reach man. In him we 
find at work Gravitation, Cohesion, Chemical 
Affinity, that Organic Life which belongs to the 
vegetable, a Life that is merely animal, and also 
that higher Rational, Moral, and Spiritual Life, 
which is peculiar to himself. Everything is car- 
ried up, and then something is added — it is 
not developed from what is below, or caused by 
it — but added to it till we reach man at the top. 
Man is there by the possession of everything that 
is below him, and something more, — that some- 
thing being that which makes him man. 

Having thus in himself generically all that is 
below him, man has the power of entering into 
sympathy with it ; and then, in virtue of those 
rational and moral powers, and of that freedom of 
choice with an alternative in kind which he alone 
possesses, he has not only the capacity to compre- 
hend speculatively what is below him, which no 
animal has in any degree, but also the higher ca- 
pacity and the natural right to rule over it. Thus 
do Philosophy and the Scriptures agree in making 
the outcome of those faculties by which man is dis- 
tinguished from the brutes to be dominion. The 



22 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

idea of dominion on the part of any brute as origi- 
nating in comprehension, as exercised in freedom, 
and as extending over any distance in apace, or 
any period of time, is absurd. 

Looking at the relations of the forces and 
powers as presented on the board, we see that 
man has a right to the highest place on two 
grounds. First, all other things are a condition 
for him. He is conditioned upon them. They 
precede him, not arbitrarily, as a herald precedes 
a king, but in the way of preparation, as soil pre- 
cedes vegetation, and as vegetable, precedes ani- 
mal life. So far as the creation was a process of 
upbuilding, that which came last was of course 
highest. But again, man is also highest because 
he subordinates all things to his own ends and 
uses them as they do not use him. Pope says, 
indeed, — 

" While man exclaims * see all things for my use,' 
1 See man for mine/ replies a pampered goose. ' M 

But though in the ordering of Providence man 
may be of use to the goose, it is still true that he 
makes use of the goose, while the goose does not 
make use of him at all. So of all other animals, 
and of all natural forces. The earth was given 
to man that he might " replenish," and " subdue " 
it, and make it subservient to his own ends. 

The superiority of man as thus seen is not 
anomalous. It is wholly analogous to the supe- 
riority of each higher force to those below it 
Each of them makes use of those below as they 



HIGHER FORCES NOT DEVELOPED. 23 

do not of it; and, indeed, each manifests itself 
only on the condition of overcoming that which 
is below it. Cohesion in the wall above us and 
in the objects around us, manifests itself only as 
it overcomes gravitation, holding the parts in their 
place in opposition to it. If there were as little 
cohesion among the particles of the wall as there 
is in water, it would come down at once. Chem- 
ical Affinity manifests itself only as overcoming 
cohesion, and Vegetable Life only as overcoming all 
the three lower forces, separating from their affini- 
ties and cohesions the particles it needs, bringing 
them into new relations, and lifting them, in oppo 
sition to gravitation, a hundred and fifty, yes, in 
the great trees of California, three hundred and 
fifty feet into the air. And this holds all the way 
up. Man acts, as man, chiefly as he resists and 
overcomes lower forces. 

The above relation of these forces to each other 
in its bearing on the doctrine of development 
was, I believe, first seen and stated by President 
Chadbourne in his lectures here on Natural The- 
ology. That bearing is this. It is not readily 
seen how a force manifesting itself in conjunction 
with other forces, and yet only as it makes thero 
subservient, can be developed from those forces. 
It would seem to be making the effect mightier 
than the cause, and so to be violating that funda- 
mental law of causation by which for every effect 
there is demanded an adequate cause. 



24 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

From the figure I have drawn you will see how 
it is that the universe gets its unity. It is because 
each lower force is a condition for that which is 
above it, and is then taken up and acts in con- 
junction with the higher. On any other system 
the forces would be either alien or discordant. 

You will also see how it comes to pass that the 
structure of the universe, or rather of that part of 
it with which we are more immediately connected, 
must be regarded as pyramidal. The sphere of 
the lowest force is the broadest. There are more 
bodies affected by Gravitation than by Cohesion, 
more by Cohesion than by Chemical Affinity, more 
by Chemical Affinity than by Vegetable Life, more 
by Vegetable than by Animal Life, and more by 
Animal Life than are under the dominion of Rea- 
son, or are possessed of it. 

But while this is true, it will be observed that 
we have here two wholes that are inversely as 
each other. If, as we go up step by step we 
diminish the number of individuals so as to form 
a pyramid in respect to numbers, we add at each 
step to the number of forces, so that in respect to 
them man is a greater whole than any below him- 
These two wholes are analogous to those of exten- 
sion and comprehension, which belong to the con- 
cept, and will be spoken of hereafter. 

I said that I should be glad to present to you 
man as a unity. You now see what the idea of 
unity is. It is in contrast with that of a unit, 



MAN AS A UNITY. 25 

and can result only from some relation of parts 
that go to form one whole. I propose then to 
present man as having a unity in himself similar 
to that which I have now presented to j^ou as 
belonging to the universe, and in the next Lecture 
shall present that unity as it is manifested phys- 
ically hi the different systems of which his body 
is composed. 



LECTURE II. 

THE BODY. 

We have now separated man from all other 
beings and things, and have found his place. This 
last we have done by comparing the great forces of 
the universe and finding what I called the law of 
the conditioning and the conditioned. According 
to this, Gravitation, the most universal of the forces, 
is the condition for the others, and so the lowest. 
Next above is Cohesion. Of this, Gravitation is 
the condition, but not the cause. These two, again, 
are generally, not always, the condition of Chem- 
ical Affinity ; these three, of Vegetable Life ; these 
four, of Animal Life ; and these five, of that higher 
Rational and Spiritual Life which is peculiar to 
man. In each case, as we go up, we take with us 
all that is below, and add something ; and in each 
case we introduce, not merely complexity, which 
some have made the test of higher and lower, but 
we introduce a force which subordinates to itself 
all that is below it ; which indeed manifests itself 
only by thus subordinating and overmastering that 
which is below it. Hence the impossibility that 
the higher force should have been developed from 
the lower. So far as these forces are concerned, if 



CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES. 27 

the universe had been constituted for the purpose 
of excluding the idea of development, it could not 
have been more effectually done. 

In virtue of the law thus given we have a pyr- 
amidal structure of the universe which gives us 
a basis for the symmetrical classification of the 
sciences. The first three forces give the Physical 
Sciences. As matter acts in masses, or in molecules; 
through vast distances, or distances imperceptible, 
we have Astronomy and Chemistry. The fourth 
force gives us Botany in its various branches ; the 
fifth gives us Zoology; and the sixth Civil Law, 
Political Economy, Ethics, Metaphysics, all those 
sciences which originate from man as their subject. 
This conception has always entered unconsciously 
into the classification of the sciences as a whole, 
bo far as they have been classified, and often also 
into the arrangement in particular sciences. It is 
a law of the forces. It is not a law of logic. It 
is not a mere classification. It is a law of the 
forces, and so underlies the classification and the 
logical relations. It is not a law of interdepend- 
ence. It is a law of dependence of the upper 
upon the lower forces, but there is no dependence 
of gravitation upon any other force, and, where the 
method is by the addition of superior forces, there 
is no dependence throughout of that which is 
below on that which is above. Vegetable life is 
dependent upon the forces below it, but they are 
in no way dependent upon it. 



28 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

To this law of conditioning and conditioned I 
ask particular attention, because it will give us our 
method in the investigations that are to follow. I 
do not speak of it as anything new. It was 
stated by me some ten years since in this place, 
and will be found in the Lectures on Moral Science 
then delivered and since published. But as I am 
to make so free a use of this law, as it is, indeed, 
so the condition of these Lectures, that I could not 
have delivered them without it, their whole method 
depending upon it, it may not be unsuitable for 
me to say that so far as I know, it had not been 
previously stated. I feel, therefore, that I have 
a right to it. It came to me, not in the interest 
of physical science though it covers the physical 
sciences, but in the interest of Ethics, and as lying 
at the basis of the law of limitation, to be spoken 
of hereafter. It is, I think, the law that pervades 
the structure of the universe up to the point where 
a true causation comes in, and gives it its unity ; 
and it is under the guidance of this law that we 
now take up the study of man. 

We have separated man from everything else ; 
we have shown his place ; and now, in accordance 
with the law just stated, we make a further sepa- 
ration thus, — 

MIND. 
BODY. 

In our present state the body is the condition of 
the mind as we know it. We therefore place it 



THE BODY. 29 

below, and begin with the body. We wish to 
study man as a unity. This we can best do by a 
separation of the parts of his complex nature, by 
taking that part first which is lowest, and so a con- 
dition for all the rest, and so on upward till we 
reach that which is highest, and so the condition 
of nothing above it. If we can do this we shall 
have an u Outline Study of Man " throughout. 

First, then, we take the body. This is the 
subject of two sciences of which one is the condi- 
tion of the other. We therefore place them thus, — 

PHYSIOLOGY. 

ANATOMY. 

Anatomy is simply descriptive. It tells us what 
there is in the body. Physiology teaches us the 
function, or functions of each part, and how those 
functions are performed. The three questions 
which I endeavor to teach my classes on this sub- 
ject to answer are, First. What is there in this part 
of the body ? Second. What function does it per- 
form ? Third. How, or on what conditions, does it 
perform it ? Whoever knows all that is implied 
in these questions knows all he needs to know in 
regard to the body in health, since a knowledge of 
the laws of health is involved in that of the func- 
tions and the mode of their performance. The 
physician needs to know another class oi sciences. 
That you should all know the position and struct- 
are of those organs and tissues of the body by 



30 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

which the functions of life are performed, is desira- 
ble, but not necessary for our present purpose. 

The body is not a single system. It is consti- 
tuted of different systems that are separate from 
each other, and are capable, at least some of them, 
of being shown separately. They have intimate 
relations to each other, and are bound up together, 
but are still separate, and each of these systems 
has a separate function. If then we would study 
this subject in accordance with the principle laid 
down, we shall need to inquire in the first place, 
just as we inquired in regard to the lowest and 
most universal force in nature, what that funda- 
mental function is without which none of the rest 
could be performed. 

I am perfectly aware, and it cannot fail to 
occur to you as I proceed, of the circle that is 
implied in these inquiries. In any given organiza- 
tion, life seems to move in a circle, each system 
and function implying every other. The heart, 
where there is a heart, implies the stomach, and 
the stomach, the heart. The heart needs the 
stomach to supply it with nutriment, and the 
stomach needs the heart to supply it with blood. 
This is because, when we reach organization, we 
find, not merely as heretofore, dependence of the 
higher upon the lower, but a system of interdepend- 
ence. In all organizations, there is not only a 
dependence of the higher upon the lower, but also 
a reaction of the higher upon the lower, binding 



THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. 31 

them together in a union so close that " if one 
member suffer all the members suffer with it." 
In this view of it the different systems may be 
said to be reciprocally conditioned upon each other. 
Still there is an order of nature and of thought by 
which these systems may be presented as condi- 
tioning and conditioned, in accordance with the 
principle already laid down. 

To proceed then : if anything is to be built, it is 
obvious that we must have something to build it 
of. We must have material ; and in the case of 
all organizations, so far as I know, some prepara- 
tion of that material is needed. The process by 
which this preparation .is made in the human 
system, for we are now speaking only of that, is 
called digestion. This process, with its accessories, 
is performed by the organs of mastication, and by 
the stomach and intestinal canal, together with the 
organs of secretion connected with them. It con- 
sists of various steps, and is so scientific that science 
cannot perform it; or, if you please, so artificial 
that art cannot reach it. So it is in man, and in- 
deed everywhere ; but in the lower forms of organ- 
ization the process is simple, and the organ may 
seem a mere surface. But whatever the organ 
may be we must have the material ; that material 
must be prepared ; the process by which it is pre- 
pared is digestion ; and, as that process is, at least 
in thought, the condition of any other, we may 
set down as lowest 

T1!K DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. 



32 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

But when the material for building up the body 
has been prepared, what next is required ? evidently 
it must be transported to the point where it is 
needed. The system which does this is composed 
of the heart, the arteries, and the capillaries. The 
veins, as returning the blood to the heart, are acces- 
sory to these, and are a part of the same system. 
As the blood goes out from the heart and returns 
to it, it is said to circulate, and this movement 
gives its name to the system. Its object, however, 
is distribution, and since this is immediately con- 
ditioned upon the digestive system, and is itself 
the condition of any other system, we have as 
next in order 

THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. 

For some reason not fully understood by us it is 
requisite for the fitness of fluids which are to be 
used in building up animal bodies, I believe uni- 
versally, certainly it is so in man, that they should 
first be acted upon by the oxygen of the atmos- 
phere. That this may be done we have what is 
called the smaller circulation, in which the blood is 
carried from the right side of the heart through the 
lungs, and returned to its left side. In thus pass- 
ing it loses carbon and its dark color, taking on a 
bright scarlet, and thus becomes fitted for its work. 
We thus have 

THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM. 



RESPIRATORY AND SECRETORY SYSTEMS. 33 

What next ? The material is now prepared foT 
use, but its constituent parts are mixed in one fluid, 
and we need special fluids to be used for particular 
purposes in different parts of the body. We need 
tears to moisten the eyes, and ear-wax to guard 
the ears from insects, and saliva to moisten the 
mouth and to enable us to swallow food that is 
dry. For digesting the food and its chylification, 
we need the gastric juice, the pancreatic juice, and 
the bile ; we need synovia for the joints, and we 
need to have the ashes of the system, when the car- 
bon has been consumed, separated and carried off. 
These and similar selections and processes are per- 
formed for the most part by what are called glands, 
Bometimes by what seem to be only surfaces, and 
the system by which they are performed is that 
which comes next in order. It is called 

THE SECRETORY SYSTEM. 

But in the processes of life there is constant 
waste. The material becomes unfit for use. What 
are you to do with it ? You strike your finger- 
nail and there comes under it extravasated blood. 
What is to become of it ? Plainly we need a set 
of vessels, everywhere at work, that may be called 
scavengers, as having, for their chief office, to 
gather up waste material and carry it into those 
channels by which it may be eliminated from the 
body. This system is next in order, and is 
called 

THE ABSORBENT SYSTEM. 
3 



34 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

The systems already considered, or at least the 
functions performed by them, seem necessary to 
life in any form. We now pass to those that are 
built up by these, and which belong to special 
forms of life, generally those that are higher. If 
the body of man was to be erect and movable, a 
permanent frame- work with joints was necessary, 
Such a frame- work we find in the bones. Of these 
the main objects are support and leverage, but they 
also, as in the skull and thorax, furnish protection. 
For these all the other systems are a condition, and 
so we have in the next place 

THE OSSEOUS SYSTEM. 

Having then something to be moved, and having 
joints and leverage, we need that which shall move 
it. This we have in the muscles. These are ad- 
justed to the bones so as to produce by their mu- 
tual contractions and relaxations just the motions, 
and all the motions of which the joints admit. 
For these, in a being like man, the bones are a con- 
dition. We thus have next 

THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 

But the muscles have neither intelligence nor 
power, unless, indeed, it be what is called the vis 
insita, by which they are simply held in position, 
and hold the bones strongly together. If they are 
to contract, it must be by a stimulus from without 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 35 

themselves ; and if tliey are to contract in obedience 
to intelligence and will, there must be some system 
in which that intelligence and will shall more im- 
mediately reside. This system must, moreover, be 
related to the muscles on the one hand, and to the 
external world on the other, so as to be at once 
receptive of sensations and a fountain of power. 
Such a system we have in the brain, the spinal 
marrow, and the nerves. Of these the larger por- 
tions are central, are wholly inclosed in bone, and 
show by their position and the care with which they 
are guarded, that the other systems were made 
with reference to them, while the nerves are chan- 
nels of sensation and of motive power. We thus 
have next, and highest as completing the individ 

ual 

' THE NERYOUS SYSTEM. 

But though we have thus reached the top so 
far as the individual is concerned, we have not 
yet enumerated all the systems. There are two 
more, incidental, but yet essential. 

The systems already given have been given as 
separate. They may be conceived of as separate, 
and several of them may, to a great extent, be 
actually separated from the re3t. If we but had 
the skill, the circulatory, the digestive, and the 
nervous systems might be drawn out from the 
rest and shown separately as the skeleton actu- 
ally is. How is it then that they are so bound 



36 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

together as to become a unity ? This is done by 
a mass of cellular tissue which envelops and per- 
vades the other tissues of the body. Take, for 
instance, the muscles as composed of those little 
fleshy fibres that have the power of contraction, 
and each one of those fibres is enveloped by a 
portion of cellular tissue that passes on to a point 
where they all unite and are hardened into a ten- 
don. This tissue thus pervading all parts of the 
body is called cellular, because it is connected 
throughout by cells, and it is in that that the 
fat is deposited. It is in that also that the water 
collects in dropsy. A man with this disease may 
seem large, but if you tap him in the top of his 
foot, several gallons of water will run off, and he 
will collapse at once, showing that this cellular 
tissue is connected throughout the body. It is 
exceedingly fine. If it could be separated, it 
would weigh but a few ounces, and you could 
double it up and hold it in your hand. It has 
withal no sensibility, and yet it is absolutely 
indispensable to the unity of the body that there 
should be this fine, all-pervading, unobtrusive sys- 
tem. It is called 

THE CELLULAR SYSTEM. 

But since it performs no distinct function by 
itself, but is only incidental and subsidiary, it 
cannot be ranked with the others. It seems tc 



CELLULAR AND TEGUMENTARY SYSTEMS. 87 

trie it should be written across the ends of the 
others to show that it pervades the whole, and 
binds the whole together. 

The Cellular System, however, is not the only 
one that is thus incidental. It binds the others 
together indeed and gives them unity, but they 
also need to be covered. They would not look 
well otherwise. We have therefore a covering 
provided, which also indeed performs other func- 
tions. It consists of three layers, the scarf-skin, 
the rete mucosum, which holds the coloring 
matter, and the true skin. These three parts, 
including the hair and the nails, which are sup- 
posed to pertain to the scarf-skin, compose 

THE TEGUMENTARY SYSTEM. 

This also requires the same arrangement in the 
mode of its presentation as the Cellular System. 
I have now given in their order the functions 
that seem necessary to be performed, and also the 
systems that perform them, but there are two 
great functions performed in the body for which 
we know of no systems. One of these is what 
is caUed assimilation. 

This is the most wonderful process that takes place 
in the physical system, that is, if there is any dif- 
ference between them. You will see what is meant 
by this. Suppose you have the food prepared, sup- 
pose it changed by the lungs, and circulated, and 



38 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

special fluids secreted, what have you to do fur- 
ther? Why, you have to construct the system. 
Here you have a great variety of substances and 
tissues ; you have the skin, the hair, the nails, the 
muscles, the bones, the enamel of the teeth, the 
peculiar matter of which the eye is formed, and all 
this is to be taken from one common fluid, that is, 
the blood. Now when the food is brought in a fluid 
Btate to the point where it is needed, what is it 
that causes it to become skin, or nail, or bone, or 
muscle? What is it? Nobody knows what the 
system or organ is that does it. As far as we 
can understand it, it is performed at the point 
where the arteries terminate and the veins begin. 
And that is most marvelous, because, so far as I 
know, there is no microscope, wonderful as are 
the improvements in that instrument, that can 
discover the exact point where the arteries run 
into the veins. Yet there is no doubt about it. 
It is, as it is called, a system of circulation. The 
blood goes in a circle, and moreover there is no 
doubt about the fact of a very free intercommuni- 
cation between the arteries and the veins. Some 
of you may remember, I do, when they used to 
bleed people, and may have noticed how the flow 
of the blood would be instantly quickened by 
loosening the cord about the arm when it had 
been made so tight as to check the flow of blood 
in the artery. This was such as could be ac- 
counted for in no way except by supposing the 



ASSIMILATION. — CALORIFICATION. 39 

arteries and veins to inosculate, as the doctors 
say, at some point, and so, to form one continuous 
circle. It is at that point, so far as we can judge, 
that this process of assimilation takes place. But 
what is it at that point that knows the material 
that is required for bone, for muscle, for skin, for 
the enamel of the teeth, and selects it, and carries 
it to its proper place, and so fixes it there as to 
complete the texture ? What it is nobody knows, 
but it is this selection of material from a common 
fluid, and this compacting and arranging of it into 
organized tissue that is called assimilation, and it 
is a wonderful process — a process without which 
all the others had been useless. So far as we can 
discover, there is, as has been said, no separate 
system by which this process is performed, but it 
seems to be performed by the capillaries that con- 
nect the arteries and the veins. 

Then there is another great function which seema 
to have no separate system. This is what is called 

CALORIFICATION 

or the heating of the body. On that subject there 
have been all kinds of theories since my remem- 
brance. There was a time when the heat of the 
body was accounted for by supposing that the lungs 
were a furnace, and that there was combustion in 
them just as there is in a fire-place. No doubt 
there is in the lungs a union of oxygen and carbon, 
and carbonic acid is formed. But then it is not 



40 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

any hotter in the lungs than it is elsewhere. But 
if the fire is there it ought to be hotter. Then it 
was said that arterial blood contained latent heat 
which was diffused as it went on. That was in 
the days when it was supposed there was such 
a thing as heat, but since that is exploded, and 
all heat is motion, it may be doubted whether 
there is such a thing as latent motion. It would 
appear therefore that the function of calorification 
is performed in some way in connection with that 
of assimilation, perhaps in accordance with the 
law that heat is evolved when a fluid becomes 
solid. It may be also that in that destruction 
of organization which is constantly going on in 
the body, there is a union of oxygen with the 
material, from which heat is evolved. At any 
rate we know of no separate system by which 
this function is performed. 

We have then, so far as I know, the systems 
and functions that are requisite for the well-being 
of the body, and they may be presented together 

thus : 

Nervous. 
Muscular. 
^ Osseous. 



H 



g g Absorbent. « h 

h | Secretory. 5 a 

© g Respiratory. § § 

* w Circulatory, h « 

On Q < 

Digestive. 

That is the order in which, on the whole, I 



THE BODY. 41 

should put theni. In regard to some of them there 
may be room for question. If there are physi- 
cians here, they, very likely, would think so. For 
instance, there might be criticism at this point. I 
have put the circulatory immediately above the 
digestive system, but when the material is digested 
and separated in the stomach and intestines, before 
it goes into what may properly be called the cir- 
culatory system, it is taken up by a set of absorb- 
ents called lacteals, and is carried by them into 
the circulatory system. Some physiologists would 
therefore say that the absorbent system should be 
placed next above the digestive, but I regard the 
lacteals as a part of the digestive system, and think 
that that system properly continues till its product 
is delivered over to another. 

If now you look at that as a whole, you will 
observe that it may be divided into two parts by 
a line between the absorbent and osseous systems, 
and that the five which are below are used for 
the purpose of building and repairing the three 
which are above. Whatever you may say about 
the arrangement of the whole, nothing can be 
plainer than that the five lower systems are 
necessary as a condition for those which are above 
them. These are the builders ai$ repairers, and 
their functions are common to vegetables and to 
animals. Vegetables have what is equivalent to 
digestion ; they have a circulation, and they have 
respiration. A tree breathes through its leaves, 



42 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

and it circulates its fluids once a year. It has 
also secretions and absorbents. All these are com- 
mon to the animal and the vegetable, but the 
three above are the systems that are to be built 
up. 

But between the two classes of systems now 
pointed out there is also another difference. Of 
the three lower systems the organs are in the 
great cavities of the thorax and abdomen, which 
are mainly given up to them, and they all per- 
form their functions without our knowing anything 
about them. They are involuntary. There are, 
indeed, some muscles, as those of respiration and 
of the eyelids, that are partly voluntary and 
partly involuntary, but these are wholly involun- 
tary, or at least, they are so with most persons. 
Occasionally there is an exception in some respects. 
I knew a man who could stop by his will the 
beating of his heart, so that it would beat eight 
times less in a minute ; and there is on record the 
case of a man who had power over his heart in 
this respect, and who went so far as to make bets 
about the time he could stop it, till at length he 
Stopped it, and it never beat again. In general, 
these five are involuntary ; their organs are con- 
cealed from viev^ and are placed where they are 
needed without regard to symmetry. 

And here again there is a difference. The 
three higher systems are symmetrically divided by 
a vertical line into two equal and similar halves, — 



TEMPERAMENTS. 43 

these, and all the special organs connected with 
them. Thus you have on each side an eye, an ear, 
a nostril, an arm, and so on, and these are gen- 
erally so far equal and similar that most persons 
observe no difference. There are, however, few if 
any, the two sides of whose faces are precisely 
alike. Their eyes are not alike, the form of the 
muscles on the two sides of the face is not alike. 
I know a lady who says that she is careful to turn 
the company side of her face to those she is speak- 
ing with. In some this difference is more con- 
spicuous than in others, but in general it is not 
noticed except by artists. 

Thus is a voluntary and symmetrical system 
built up by one that is involuntary, and presented 
to an intelligent spirit for its use and control. 

The systems of which I have spoken are com- 
bined in different proportions, and that gives rise 
to the doctrine of Temperaments. In their enu- 
meration of these, physiologists are not uniform. 
They speak of the sanguine, the bilious, the 
melancholic, the phlegmatic, and the nervous. 
This doctrine of the temperaments is of ancient 
date, and was once in high repute ; but since at- 
tention has been more directed to the connection 
of the mental operations with the nervous system, 
it has been less esteemed. Still there are those 
who judge of other men by the predominance of 
these different systems, and no doubt there is some 
foundation for this. No doubt the predominance 



44 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

of the nervous, or the muscular, or the lymphatic 
system will be connected with certain traits of 
character, or rather with certain characteristics; 
but at present the temperaments are so poorly 
defined, and so inextricably mixed, that no doctrine 
respecting them can be called a science, or scarcely 
scientific. Perhaps more may be learned by the 
relation of the three great cavities, that of the 
brain, of the thorax, and of the abdomen, to each 
other. With the cavity of the brain and of the 
thorax both large, you may count on a powerful 
man. With the cavity of the brain small, and 
the expanse of the abdomen large, you would 
expect less general power. No man thus consti- 
tuted has been known to accomplish much. 

In connection with these systems, I again call 
your attention to the doctrine of development 
which was spoken of in the last Lecture. Is the 
body developed ? Are these systems developed ? 
Starting as the body does from a cell, the doctrine 
of development may seem plausible. This doc- 
trine, so far as it can account for anything, sup- 
poses two things : first, a force that works from 
within ; and second, a whole already existing, that 
is enveloped. If either of these be wanting, there 
can be no development that we need trouble our- 
selves about, and indeed the word loses its mean- 
ing. A house is not developed. , Its increase in 



DEVELOPMENT. 45 

size or elevation is by an agency from without. 
The figure on a carpet, as it gradually appears, is 
not developed ; it grows, and that through an 
agency not in the loom, or in the materials. 
When, therefore, we inquire whether the body is 
developed, we inquire whether its different sys- 
tems are in any sense enfolded in the cell from 
which it starts, and are made manifest by a force 
inherent in itself. This point we need to settle. 
Precisely what we mean by development we need 
to know, lest we fall, as is so often done, into a 
learned ignorance by substituting a word not well 
analyzed, but become familiar, for a knowledge of 
the thing. 

With this statement, if we look at the relation 
of the systems mentioned to each other, or even 
of the different parts of individual systems to the 
other parts, we may see what this doctrine, as thus 
applied, amounts to. Take, for instance, the os- 
Beous system. Each bone of the skeleton grows 
from a distinct centre of ossification, is formed as 
a distinct instrument, in most instances tipped with 
cartilage, and except through this cartilage never 
comes into contact with any other bone. The 
bones of the upper extremity are a separate organ- 
ization that do not touch, except at a single point 
those of the lower. The bones of the skull com- 
mence at different points and grow towards each 
other, uniting by sutures. The bone of the 
tongue is wholly unconnected with any other bone 



46 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

and so could not have been developed from the 
Bystem. The teeth grow in the jaws, but are 
separate instruments, and are not developed from 
them. Indeed, each bone seems to have been 
formed separately, as a mechanic forms nails and 
pegs and the different parts of a chair, and then 
brings them together. There is nothing to in- 
dicate that they start fiom a common centre. 
Take, again, the heart and the arteries. Let the 
arteries run on till they become capillaries, and 
then enlarge themselves again and come round 
into the heart in the vena cava. Does anybody 
believe that this double set of vessels could have 
been developed from the heart and thus joined at 
the extremities ? And if that be so when but a 
single system is concerned, much more is it so in 
relation to the several systems. To me it does not 
seem possible that each and all of these can so 
exist in a single cell that their production can be 
at all accounted for by development. The process 
stands by itself — both that of origination and of 
growth, and is utterly inscrutable. Growth is not 
evolution. It may accompany it, but is not it. 

And now that I am on this subject there is 
another point connected with a system that I have 
not yet mentioned, and which bears upon both 
origin and development. I have not mentioned 

THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM, 

which is the last in order, and has relation to the 



CREATION. 47 

race. This involves that sexual relation which is 
bo universal and controlling in the structure of 
organized bodies. This relation implies more than 
one individual as its condition, and the difficulty- 
is to account, not merely for one individual by de- 
velopment, but for the first two that held to each 
other this relation. In all the accounts I have seen, 
this difficulty has been either ignored or slurred 
over. According to the Bible, as you will remem- 
ber, the fact of this relation in our first parents is 
connected with the idea of creation. It is said, 
" male and female created He them ; " and I ask 
you whether the idea of this relation, especially as 
so pervasive and involving such variety of adap- 
tation, does not necessitate an origin by creation. 
In dioecious plants, unless there were originally 
two, how was the species perpetuated ? Not as 
now certainly. So of animals and of man. Give 
us a first pair and we have no difficulty ; without 
that, it seems to me we must suppose processes for 
which facts furnish no support, and the present 
order of Nature no analogy. Such processes we 
must suppose, and, unless we resort to that cuttle- 
fish ink of philosophers, indefinite words, we must 
ultimately get back to the fact of a creation. Go 
back as we may, development presupposes a whole 
either in idea or in fact, and the origin of such a 
whole demands intelligence and creative power. 

Connecting, then, this fact of the sexual relation 
m organized matter with that relation of the forces 



48 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

in unorganized matter mentioned in the last 
Lecture, by which the higher force reveals itself 
only as it overmasters the lower — which fact 
indeed runs up through the various grades of or- 
ganization — and it is difficult to see how a phys- 
ical universe could have been so constructed as to 
exclude more effectually the idea of development. 
The two relations demand a power working from 
without, and from above. 

Looking now at these systems as a whole, I may 
observe in a practical way that we see what health 
is, and to what our attention is to be directed in 
preserving it. Health consists in the perform- 
ance by each system of the body of its function, 
or functions, in a perfect manner. Let each system 
thus perform its function perfectly and there will 
be perfect health ; otherwise not. Hence, in pre- 
serving and promoting health, attention should be 
directed to the performance of fimction, rather 
than to technical and formal rules. 

In looking also at the different combinations of 
these systems, and at the differences between men 
thence resulting, we may see that it is one thing 
to study man, and another to study men. In one 
case we study those things in man which are com- 
mon to all men, and only in those respects in 
which they are thus common ; that is, we study 
uniformities. This gives us science. In the other 
case the things that are common are presupposed* 



UNITY OF NATURE AND OF THE BODY. 49 

and we study men only as they differ. Uniformi- 
ties — differences — as men perceive and arrange 
the first they become scientific ; as they perceive 
the second they become practical ; as they are able 
to combine both they become both scientific and 
practical. Often these are not combined, hence 
a man may be scientific and able to talk well, and 
yet utterly fail in practical affairs ; or, again, he 
may know nothing but differences and details and 
be a successful business man. You will see at 
once that in a course of Lectures like this it is only 
the knowledge of man that can be taught. 

We have thus seen, as I promised to show you, 
that the body is built up on the same principle as 
external nature. It has its unity in the same way, 
one system being conditioned upon another; but 
the unity is more close, because here the higher 
systems react upon the lower, and thus give a 
reciprocal sympathy of all the parts. 

And now I will close this Lecture by asking you 
what it is that constitutes this body which we have 
thus considered. Is it simply the shifting matter 
of which it may happen to be composed at any 
given moment ? or is it not rather that permanent, 
invisible, automatic, selecting and arranging power 
which begins with us, and goes with us to the 
end? 

4 



LECTURE III. 

MINI).— INTELLECT. — THE KEASON. 

Extkunal nature is built up on the principle of 
the conditioning and the conditioned. Thus built 
it becomes ;i condition lor the body of man. That 
again, as we have soon, is built up on the same 
principle. Is this true also of the mind? To 
that we are next to pass, but before doing this we 
must notice hero, as we do at every point of transi- 
tion in nature, the care that is taken to prevent the 
transition from seeming abrupt. The transition is 
absolute*, and perfect. An element wholly new is in- 
troduced. Sensation, which we have now reached, 
is not gravitation, nor any modification of it. But 
when the new element is introduced it is so fore- 
shadowed and simulated by that which is below 
it that it is often dillicult to (ix the point of tran- 
sition, and some arc even led to doubt whether 
there is such a, point. And nowhere is this more 
noticeable than in the apparent shading off between 
what is called the reflex action of the nervous sys- 
tem and those conscious and voluntary actions which 
are the product of mind. This kind of action has 
been much spoken of of late, and without know 
ing something of this we cannot understand our- 
selves. 



REFLEX ACTION. 51 

This automatic and reflex action is of different 
degrees. There is, first, that which originates in 
the system of nerves that is called ganglionic, and 
that is wholly involuntary. With no knowledge 
or consciousness on our part the ganglion, or ner- 
vous centre connected with the heart, takes cogni- 
zance of its state when full, and by a reflex action 
originates the movement of contraction. In the 
same way the enlargement and contraction of the 
pupil of the eye is regulated, and also the processes 
of digestion and secretion and assimilation, with 
the muscular movements they involve. In all 
these there is an adjustment of movements and a 
conspiring of means to ends that are admirable, 
and such a simulation of intelligence and volition 
that not a few have referred these movements, and 
bo the up-building of the body, to the unconscious 
operations of the soul. 

But however this may be, we have, in the second 
place, that reflex action which is connected with 
the voluntary muscles. It was in connection with 
this that the constitution of the- nervous system 
as double, and also the different functions of its 
cineritious and fibrous portions were discovered. 
This may be illustrated thus : — 



^^. 



52 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

If we suppose the straight line A to represent the 
spinal column and the lines B and C to be nerves 
passing out from it, as there are nerves on either 
side passing out between each two of the vertebrae, 
then it is found that the nerve is composed of two 
parts, one originating on the back side of the spi- 
nal column, or rather from its centre, and passing 
out separately by distinct roots, the other originat- 
ing on the front side. The one originating from the 
centre springs from the cineritious matter, and has 
upon it, before it reaches the other portion, an en- 
largement or ganglion. These portions unite in the 
common nerve and become undistinguishable. Still 
they perform different functions. The part with 
the ganglion upon it is found to be the nerve of sen- 
sation, and the other the nerve of motion. This is 
ascertained by experiments upon animals in which 
the roots of each are severed. If one be severed all 
power of motion will be lost while the power of sen- 
sation will remain, if the other be severed all power 
of sensation will be lost while the power of motion 
will remain. It sometimes happens in paralysis 
that there is the power of motion without that of 
feeling, and the reverse. We have thus what 
resembles a railway with a double track. One 
portion of the nerve, called the afferent, brings in 
the impression from without ; and the other, called 
the efferent, responds by originating motion from 
within. Motion thus produced in the voluntary 
muscles without consciousness or volition, is called 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF MIND. 53 

reflex action. The centre of it is the spinal column 
and the medulla oblongata, and its object is to 
guard the body in sudden emergencies, and to 
relieve volition from unnecessary burdens. Some 
motions originally of this kind, as winking and 
breathing, may be controlled in a measure by the 
will; while others, originated by the will, but often 
repeated, are supposed by some to pass out of con- 
sciousness, and to become wholly reflex. These 
are such as walking and playing on a musical in- 
strument. Certainly there is a wonderful blend- 
ing of action from forces merely vital, and from 
the action of mind by intelligent volition ; and 
it is often difficult to say where one ends and the 
other begins. 

We now pass to the Mind. And first, has mind 
a separate existence ? Is it something distinct 
from matter? So far as I can see, we have as much 
evidence for the existence of a permanent thinking 
thing that is separate from matter as we have of a 
permanent hard thing that is matter. Of the 
essence of either matter or mind we neither have, 
nor can have, any direct cognizance. That the 
phenomena of each have an underlying essence, or 
substance, we know by the laws of thought. We 
know tlfet there can be no phenomena without a 
cause, and since the cause cannot be nothing, the 
cause of both physical and mental phenomena must 
be some being, some thing. But how do we know 



54 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

that the cause of mental phenomena is not mat- 
ter ? Because mental phenomena are different from 
those of matter, and so different that they are not 
compatible with its laws. How do we know that 
a stone is not a fluid ? Because the phenomena it 
exhibits are incompatible with the laws of fluidity. 
In the same way the phenomena of mind are in- 
compatible with the laws of mattei. The first 
law of matter is that of inertia. 1 This is, that 
matter will continue in a state of rest or of motion, 
whichever it may be in, without change of state, 
unless that change be produced by something out- 
side of itself. It is true that all bodies are in 
motion, but that does not conflict with the law, for 
they will continue in motion precisely as they are 
unless they are affected by some external force. 
According to this, matter cannot become a cause 
except as it is an effect. What is called a second 
cause it may be, for the precise difference between 
a first and a second cause is that a second cause is 
first an effect, and so an effect as to be necessarily 
determined. It would be contradictory to this 
fundamental law to suppose it to be an originating* 
or proper cause. It can have no voluntary action. 
But mind knows itself as acting voluntarily, and 
as a proper cause. It is an essential difference 
between mind and matter that one is sell-active 
and the other is not. Mind acts from within by 
an energy of its own, and not simply as it is acted 
upon from without. Matter, under the same cir* 

1 See Psychology, Human and Comparative, by Dr. Wilson. 



THE MIND NOT MATERIAL. 55 

cuinstances, must always act with the same degree 
of force, This follows from the law. With mind 
we know that this is not so. I can use this stick 
with one degree of force or with another, with no 
reference to any fixed law or external force. It is 
in this power of mind to originate motion, and not 
only to direct force, but to increase or diminish 
the amount put forth, that we find a sufficient 
reason for putting mind in a different order from 
matter. Call matter force if you will, though 
what force can be without some being that has 
force I do not understand ; but call it so, and it is 
a force that can originate nothing, can direct noth- 
ing, can modify nothing except as it is modified, 
that has neither spontaneity nor volition, and can 
in no sense be a proper cause. Origination, cau- 
sation, modification, ^nd direction belong to mind. 
Mind, in short, is the cause of its own actions, 
and acts from reasons. Matter is not the cause 
of its own actions, or rather movements, and acts 
from causes in distinction from reasons. Or if 
we take any other law of matter or of motion, as, 
that action and reaction will be equal and in con- 
trary directions, we shall find that it is wholly in- 
applicable to the phenomena of mind. As applied 
to them its terms are without meaning. 

Since then the phenomena of mind are not only 
wholly different from those of matter, but are in- 
compatible with its laws, we conclude that they 
have a different basis. We conclude also that 



56 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

that basis, whatever it be, is a permanent thing, 
It is something underlying phenomena, and if I do 
not know it to be permanent, then I do not know 
that any thing hard is permanent. How do I know 
that this desk is the same hard thing that was 
here last Friday night if I do not know myself to 
be permanent? I cannot know it. Therefore I 
have the same evidence of something in myself 
that is permanent, that has thought and affections, 
and that we call mind, as I have of something out 
of myself that is permanent and hard, and that we 
call matter. Certainly my evidence for the phe- 
nomena of mind is as good as that for the phe- 
nomena of matter, since I know the phenomena of 
matter only through those of mind. That those 
phenomena have some permanent basis is as certain 
as the laws of thought, and that the basis of one is 
different from that of the other we infer not only 
from the difference of the phenomena, differing as 
they do in their nature, lying in a different region, 
and made known in a different way, but also from 
the incompatibility of the laws of matter with the 
phenomena of mind. Either physicists must give 
ap their own definitions and laws, or must concede 
to the phenomena of mind a different basis from 
those of matter. 

Of mind as thus existing we say that it mani- 
tests itself in three forms, and that these follow 
the law of conditioning and conditioned already 
spoken of, thus, — 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIBILITY. 57 

WELL. 

SENSIBILITY. 

INTELLECT. 

As philosophers universally regard it now. these 
are the general divisions of the manifestation of 
mind. I remember, and others here may, when 
the division was into the Intellect, or Understand- 
ing, as it was then called, and the Will. The Sen- 
sibility, as that which moves the Will, was classed 
with it, but now the division is as I have stated, 
and in the order in which I have placed the powers. 

For a rational being this is clearly the natural 
order. As rational, such a being can have feeling 
only as he has knowledge, and he can put forth 
choices and volitions only as he has both knowl- 
edge and feeling. This is the universal law, and 
this is the order. 

Here, however, it must be noticed that the Sen- 
sibility as used in this connection does not include 
Sensation. This is from the state of the body and 
mind as mutually related. After the body is re- 
vealed to the mind, sensation is known by the 
mind as from the body. It is known as it is in 
itself, an4 as indicative of something beyond itself. 
It is the connecting link between mind and matter. 
The mind is, indeed, affected by it, but its initia- 
tive is in matter, and because it is so we leave it 
behind us as capable of existing in connection with 
animal life only. At any rate, whatever may be 



58 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

said of it as belonging to the Sensibility in a 
broad sense, it is widely different from those affec- 
tions and emotions which belong to man as intel- 
ligent, and which are possible only on condition of 
the action of the intellect. 

Here then, we begin again, as we did before, 
with that which is lowest, 

THE INTELLECT. 

It may, perhaps, seem strange to some that the 
Intellect should be placed lowest, but it belongs 
there ; and the order in which I have presented the 
different parts of our nature presents, as I suppose, 
the order of progress of the race when it has been 
reduced to a savage or semi-barbarous state and 
would rise again. At first men worship strength 
of body, physical energy. The man who had the 
greatest power of muscles was the hero. Even 
yet there are many with whom physical prowess is 
the great thing, and who hold those who manifest 
it in higher esteem than any others. The next 
step is the worship of intellect. Disputants and 
intellectual prize fighters become heroes. Great 
debaters, pleaders, orators, writers, become the 
great men irrespective of character. This is our 
present state. No nation has yet got beyond this. 
In our literary institutions it is chiefly the intel 
lect that is educated, and in some of them more 
and more, with little or no systematic regard for 
the training of the higher powers. No doubt the 



THKEE QUESTIONS. 59 

time will come when this state of things will be 
looked back upon as we now look back on the 
ascendency of physical force. Until the Intellect 
is placed by the community where it belongs, and 
made subordinate to the Sensibility and the Will, 
we shall find that mere sharpness, shrewdness, in- 
tellectual power, and success through these, will 
be placed above those higher qualities in which 
character consists, and success through them. The 
Intellect is simply instrumental, and belongs where 
I have placed it. 

The proper business of the Intellect is to know. 
This operation of knowing may take place without 
willing. Whether it ever does without feeling is 
not so certain. We can, I think, imagine the In- 
tellect as contemplating certain subjects, say the 
existence of space, or a mathematical proposition, 
in a perfectly dry light, with no feeling whatever ; 
but if not, we can treat of it separately, as of 
length without breadth, and as we often do and 
must of things which we can conceive of sepa- 
rately, but which do not in fact exist apart. 

You will remember I said in the last Lecture 
in regard to the body that there were three ques- 
tions to be asked, — First, What is there in any 
particular part of it ? Second, What function doea 
it perform? and third, Row does it perform it? 
And so there are three questions to be asked with 
respect to the Intellect. 

First, What is there in the mind regarded as In- 
tellect ? 



60 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

Second, How came it to be there ? And 

Third, What operations can we perform with it, 
now that it is there ? 

These are the three questions which we need to 
answer ; and if we can answer these three ques- 
tions we shall know all that we need to know about 
the Intellect. 

The two questions in relation to what there is 
in the mind, and how it got there, cannot be 
treated separately. They blend together. But 
we need to know the answers to both, and in 
treating of them as thus blended, we treat of the fa- 
mous question of the origin of Knowledge. That 
has been one of the most famous questions among* 
philosophers in past times, and it is that that we 
propose to consider now. 

In doing this we suppose the Intellect to be 
unfurnished, but then we suppose it to be Intel- 
lect. As such we suppose it to have the capacity, 
the power, to know, for this is the function of 
Intellect. If there be not in it an original power 
to know, then it is not Intellect. Of the origin 
of this, or any other original power, we know 
nothing. We simply know it to be because it 
manifests itself, and, plainly a power of knowing 
can manifest itself only by knowing. So we be- 
gin by knowing ; knowing something. What then 
is it to know ? I agree with President Porter as 
he puts it in his book on The Intellect, that to 
know is to be certain of something. If you have 



THE FACULTIES GIVE CERTAINTY. 61 

not certainty there is no knowledge. It is mere 
belief or opinion. To know is to be certain. But 
certain of what ? Of the existence of that, what- 
ever it may be, concerning which we have knowl- 
edge. It is absurd to suppose that we can have 
knowledge of that which does not exist. To know 
also involves a knowledge by himself of the exist- 
ence of the bemg that knows. Certainly if a per- 
son is not certain of his own existence he cannot 
be certain of anything else. There is involved, 
therefore, in knowing, the certainty of the exist- 
ence of the thing known, and also the certainty of 
the existence of the being knowing. 

And here I observe that it is a great thing for 
a man to find himself, and to reach certainty. It 
is a great thing to have the certain knowledge of 
anything. This we have on the authority of our 
faculties. The authority of the human faculties 
is for us, and must be, the ultimate authority. If 
I cannot trust my faculties I cannot trust any- 
thing. Perhaps some one would say that I might 
trust revelation, might trust the direct voice of 
God. But how am I to know that it is a revela- 
tion? How that it is the voice of God? How 
do I, or can I know anything except through my 
faculties ? And if these faculties do not give me 
in some form, and to some extent, immediate and 
direct knowledge, that is certainty, then there is 
no hope of it anywhere. The thing is impos- 
sible. Therefore it is that I say we begin with 



62 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

knowledge. We begin with certainty. If we do 
not we never find it. We begin with the cer 
tainty of the thing known, whatever it may be, 
and also with the certainty of the existence of the 
being that knows. If the thing known be not 
certain, we do not know it. If the knower do not 
exist, he cannot know it. This certainty of the 
thing known and of the existence of the knower 
I suppose to be given in one concrete act. I do 
not understand that one of these is before the 
other, but they come together and are mutually 
dependent. The knower and the thing known are 
each revealed by an authority that involves cer- 
tainty. If not, so far as I can see, it is impossible 
that certainty should ever be reached. We must 
here find our beginning. The occasion of the first 
mental operation is supposed to be in the action 
of some one of the senses, but the operation itself 
is accompanied by that certainty which is involved 
in knowledge. 

If, then, we suppose man possessed of intellect 
alone, he may be represented by a single straight 
line thus, — 



Being. 



Object. 



Let us now suppose an object presented before 
him as a tree. Let this object so affect him 
through his senses that he becomes aware of its 



THE IDEA OF BEING. 63 

existence as something different from himself, and 
he will know the thing, and will know himself as 
knowing it. In thus knowing that which is not 
himself he will be revealed to himself, and in this 
double revelation there will be involved by neces- 
sity an idea that will connect itself with every sub- 
sequent mental operation. That is the idea of 

BEING. 

As not given by sensation, but originated by the 
mind itself, we may place this on the other side 
of the line, and we shall have two ideas, or men- 
tal products, wholly different in their origin and 
characteristics. The one is the direct product of 
sensation. It is contingent and variable. The ob- 
ject might as well have been anything else. It 
appears and gives place to others. But the idea 
of being, no sense can give. It comes by the en- 
ergy of the mind itself, and is present in connec- 
tion with all its subsequent operations. It passes 
on and becomes an element in them by necessity. 1 

We have thus two sources of knowledge: one 
the external world, giving objects that are contin- 
gent and variable ; the other the mind itself, evolv- 
ing ideas when the occasion arises by the necessity 
of its own constitution. 

We inquire then, for we are now furnishing the 
mind, what other ideas it gets, not as the product 
of the senses, but from the mind itself and by ne- 
cessity ; and I ask you whether it is possible that 

1 See Appendix B. 



64 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

the Intellect should have the notion of a tree and 
not know that it is in spewe. We put down, 
then, 

SPACE. 

By the constitution of our minds the idea of a 
tree, or of any other material thing not in space, is 
impossible to thought. This idea of Space there- 
fore will be present, and accompany all perception 
of material objects, as that of being must be pres- 
ent and accompany every operation of the mind. 

What next ? You look at the tree, you repeat 
your observation. I ask you whether it would be 
possible thus to make two successive observations 
without having the idea of 

TIME. 

Thenceforward no thought, no event, no change 
can any more occur that shall not be known as in 
time than a material object can be perceived and 
not be known as in space. The idea will accom- 
pany you in all your thinking. 

Succession gives occasion for the exercise of 
memory, and I ask you again whether it is possible 
for any one to say I remember, and not have the 
idea that he, as remembering, is the same person 
that in time past knew the thing that is remem- 
bered. Of necessity he must know that. He does 
not know it by consciousness alone for conscious- 
ness does not take cognizance of the past. He 
knows it immediately and necessarily on the joint 



NUMBER. — RESEMBLANCE. 65 

operation of consciousness and memory. Hence 
we put down as the next idea that of 

PERSONAL IDENTITY. 

We proceed : I ask whether it would be possible 
to observe different objects or successive events 
without having the idea of 

NUMBER. 

If not revealed to the mind distinctly as number 
in the first instance, it is yet so involved in all 
repetition, and especially in the presentation of 
different objects, that it enters in by necessity, and 
becomes a part of the furniture of every rational 
being. 

Once more : in noticing different objects of the 
same kind, would it be possible to avoid having 
the idea of resemblance, and its correlative, differ- 
ence ? Therefore, from the first, the idea of resem- 
blance enters in and travels along with the mind 
as the basis of all its classifications, and so of all 
Bcience. Our next idea therefore is that cf 

RESEMBLANCE. 

Besides the ideas just mentioned it is claimed 
that those of Substance, of Motion, and of the 
Infinite belong here. In respect to substance my 
only question would be whether the idea of it does 
not so come under that of being that we need not 
give it a separate place. As to motion the ques- 
i 



66 AN OUTLINE STUDY 0* MAN. 

tion is whether it be not directly apprehended by 
the senses. If not, it belongs here. But what 
shall I say of " The Infinite" ? This seems to me 
to be a mere generalization, like " The True," 
rather than an original and necessary idea. That 
we have the idea of infinity in connection with that 
of space there can be no doubt. When the mind 
has completed its intuitions in regard to space, it is 
as certain that space is infinite as that it is at all. 
Let the occasion arise and the idea comes by intu- 
ition and necessity. It can come in no other way. 
Frame to yourselves any conception you please of 
distance, and it does not approximate infinity. 
Suppose a flash of lightning to go on for a thou- 
sand years, it would be no nearer a limit than when 
it began. Of space it may be said, as has been said 
of God, that its centre is everywhere, and its cir- 
cumference nowhere. And the same of duration. 
Go back as you will, and you are no nearer a 
beginning. Hence it has been well replied, when 
it has been asked why the world was not created 
Booner, that it was created as soon as it could be. 
This is true, for at whatever point it might have 
been created the same question might have been 
asked. But the infinite which we reach in con- 
nection with extension is different from that which 
we reach in connection with duration. The in- 
finity of space is one thing, that of duration is 
another. The infinity of being, or of attributes, 
would be still another thing, and wholly different. 



NECESSARY IDEAS. 67 

The term infinite cannot be applied to either the 
intellectual or moral attributes of God in the same 
sense as to space and time. In strictness it can be 
applied to nothing that admits of degrees or limi- 
tation in any respect. But " The Infinite " must 
cover all cases in which the term infinite can be 
applied. Hence it must be found by comparison, 
and we shall always be entitled to ask, The Infi- 
nite what ? This form of expression has its place 
and use, but like " The Unconditioned," and 
" The Absolute," it is so remote from ordinary 
lines of thought and so vague and hazy that it has 
special fitness for use when men would " darken 
counsel by words without knowledge." 

Precisely what the ideas are, and all of them, 
that are thus originated by the mind itself, though 
occasioned by the senses, it is not important to 
settle ; but it is important to establish the fact of 
such a class of ideas, and to understand their na- 
ture and functions. How little the senses, or any- 
thing that can properly be called experience, has 
co do with the origin of those mentioned appears 
from the fact that but a single object is needed 
for them all. The taper is lighted and it burns. 

I will now place before you, on the left of the line, 
and in the order given, the ideas we have considered. 



Resemblance. 

Number. 

Personal Identity. 

Time. 

Space. 

Being. 



Products of the Outer 
and Inner Semse. 



68 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

It will be observed that I have spoken hitherto 
only of ideas that are necessary. But besides ideas 
there are also Propositions which are so immediately 
connected with the ideas as to be necessarily true. 
This body is in space. That proposition is true, 
and seen to be true by a necessity equal to that by 
which we have the idea of space. The swaying of 
that branch is in time. That is a truth which no 
man can deny. To deny it would be an absurdity. 
I will tell you what an absurdity is. It is some- 
thing that is opposed either to a mathematical 
demonstration, or to one of these first truths or 
original intuitions. Anything opposed to either 
of these is an absurdity, and that which it is im- 
possible for the human mind to believe. 

In the ideas and truths now presented we have 
one part of our mental furniture, and we see what 
its origin is. It originates in the mind itself, and 
is that part of its furniture which is common to all 
men. These ideas and truths are as the bones 
of the mental skeleton. They are not only what 
all men have, but must have if they are men, and 
they abide permanently in the mind. Other ideas 
come and go as guests. These keep the house. 

But if there are such ideas and truths you will 
want to know how they are to be tested. The test 
of the ideas is that they are necessary, and also 
universal in human consciousness. They are uni- 
versal because they are necessary. The test of 
the truths is that they are necessarily and univer- 



TESTS OF NECESSARY IDEAS. 69 

sally believed. Another test sometimes given is 
that they cannot be proved because no truths 
plainer than themselves can be found with which 
to prove them. Another test of these truths is, 
that if a man denies one of them he must act as 
if he believed it ; and that other men, let him deny 
it as vehemently as he will, have a right to treat 
him as if he believed it. There is nothing that 
somebody has not claimed to disbelieve, but this 
will be a test. Let any one, for instance, cb.im 
to believe that he does not exist. I should like 
to know whether he is not compelled to speak 
in order to make the denial, and whether that 
would not be acting as if he believed that he did 
exist. Or, take the belief in personal identity. 
Suppose a man to deny that, and to make a plea on 
that ground before a judge. Suppose him to say : 
" My body changes once in seven years. Accord 
ing to the physiologists not a particle of matter that 
was in it seven years ago is in it now. I believe 
that, and as I am a materialist, I believe that my 
mind changes in the same way. I do not believe 
that there is, or can be any such thing as personal 
identity. It is true some one bearing my name 
committed the murder eight years ago, but to 
punish me would be a case of mistaken identity, 
and unjust." Would the judge admit the plea? 
Would he admit it himself in the case of another 
man if that man owed him a debt? You know 
that no sane man could believe that. If we 



70 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

could possibly suppose any one to believe it, we 
should say that he had lost his reason, and was no 
longer to be treated as a rational being. 

I have dwelt on the above because I wish to 
show that there are certain elements and truths 
that belong to human nature, and that mankind 
believe in with absolute certainty. In these days, 
when it would sometimes seem as if the founda- 
tions of belief were to be utterly unsettled, I wish 
to nave it understood that there are some things 
that all men believe, and must believe. 

We are now prepared to see the distinction 
between d priori ideas and those of experience 
and also between priority in the order of time, 
and in the order of nature. 

The term d priori has been applied to those 
ideas which originate from the mind itself on the 
occasion of experience ; while ideas of experience 
are those, as of external objects, which are de- 
rived directly from the senses. The term is not 
a happy one, but we may see how it arose. The 
mind must itself exist prior to experience, and 
as the capacity and necessity for forming these 
ideas exist with equal priority as a part of its 
constitution, the ideas themselves are called d 
priori. 

The- distinction between the priority of nature 
and of time has been much insisted on by some 
philosophers, and is worthy of attention. Sensa- 
tion is supposed to be first. I see a body, and 



METAPHYSICS. 71 

have knowledge of it as such. That is first in 
the order of time. But in connection with knowl- 
edge of body I have by necessity a knowledge 
of space, and now I see that space must have 
existed in the order of nature before the body. 
It must have existed as a condition, not as a 
cause. So a man perceives an attribute. That is 
first in the order of time ; he then knows at once 
that in the order of nature the substance must 
have been first. It is in this way that a part of 
d priori ideas are distinguished from those of ex- 
perience. 

I will simply say in closing that I entered upon 
this course of Lectures as an experiment, in the 
hope of making what is commonly called meta- 
physics somewhat plain. In considering the ideas 
and truths which have been our subject to-night, 
we have reached that field, and I ask you if they 
are not plain. In one aspect of them they are 
the plainest things possible. Everybody knows 
them, and not only so but always has known 
them, and could not help knowing them. The 
ideas all men have, and the propositions are such 
as nobody thinks of denying except a philosopher, 
or possibly a fool. In another aspect, however, 
they are not plain. But this comes from their 
central position, and from that certainty about 
them, and familiarity with them, which are such 
in the mass of men as to prevent curiosity about 



72 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

them, or even thought. If their relations are 
obscure, and their analysis difficult, it is for the 
same reason that it becomes more difficult to 
demonstrate a mathematical proposition as it 
comes nearer to being a self-evident truth. 



LECTURE IV. 

THE REASON. — THE SENSES, EXTERNAL AND 
INTERNAL. 

Being, Time, Personal Identity, Space, Num 
ber, Resemblance. The ideas expressed by these 
words I suppose belong to all men. They are 
the common furniture of the mind, so that we 
see now what one part of its furniture is. We 
also see how they come. They are the product 
of the Intellect itself, and of that alone, revealing 
itself uniformly according to its own law. They 
are occasioned by sensation, but are in no proper 
sense its product, since they are the same what- 
ever the sensation may be, and, with the excep- 
tion perhaps of Space, might all be given from 
odors merely that would give no idea of an ex- 
ternal world at all. So little, indeed, is the mind 
in this department dependent upon an external 
world, that it might, from the sense of smell alone, 
make comparisons endlessly, and evolve the whole 
science of numbers. 

And not only do all men have these ideas, but 
they all believe equally those propositions which 
affirm their necessary relations. And not only 
do they believe them, but if any one denies them 



74 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

in words we have a right to assume that he is 
disingenuous, and to treat him as if he believed 
them. Amidst the uncertainties of life it is pleas- 
ant to find something that is certain, amidst the 
Babel of opinions, a ground of common belief. 

Having then this class of ideas, what name 
shall we give them ? Some have called them in- 
tuitions ; some, primitive ideas ; some, fundamen- 
tal laws ; some, rational instincts ; some, innate 
ideas. Each of these names points to some char- 
acteristic or function of the ideas, and their num- 
ber is indicative of the many-sidedness and im- 
portance of ideas that can be so variously named. 
The term innate, at one time much used, points 
to the origin of these ideas in the mind itself, but is 
not correct. They are not born in us, but, as we 
are born with eyes so that when the occasion is 
given we see, so we are born with a capacity of 
forming these ideas, so that when the occasion is 
given we form them of necessity. 

But if the ideas have been variously named, 
so has that power of the mind by which they are 
given. Some have called it a faculty. It is not 
prpperly that. The mind is said to have different 
faculties, not that it is constituted of different 
parts as the body is, but that it has the power of 
acting in different ways that can be distinguished 
and named, and its power of acting in each of 
these ways is called a faculty if it be under the 
control of the will. A faculty is a power that is 



THE REASON. 75 

under the control of the will. If not under such 
control it is not properly a faculty. We have, 
for instance, the faculty of speaking, but not that 
of circulating the blood. We do not say that, 
because the will has no power over it. In the 
same way I would say that the mind has not the 
faculty of forming these ideas, because it forms 
them by necessity. 

With these remarks about a faculty, and what 
it is, which will serve us further on, I observe 
that some have called the power which gives us 
these ideas Reason, or, The Reason. Hamilton 
and others object to this as ambiguous, and so it 
is. Reason is often used to signify that power 
by which we carry on the process of reasoning, 
which is entirely different from the power by 
which we gain the ideas that render reasoning 
possible, and in the gaining of which there is no 
process. This ambiguity is especially misleading 
from the similarity of the words, reason and rea- 
soning; for what is the power by which a man 
should carry on a process of reasoning if it be not 
reason ? There is no reasoning in obtaining these 
ideas, and the power that gives them is not more 
used in processes of reasoning than in other pro- 
cesses. Still, as reason was the word used in Ger- 
many, and was introduced by Coleridge into Eng- 
land in the days when transcendentalism was 
something mysterious and was rife, it has been 
more used in England and in this country than 



76 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

any other. But then, while its connection with 
the word reasoning, and its general use for all the 
powers of man in distinction from those of the 
brute, furnish a reason why it should not be used, 
its connection with the word rational, furnishes a 
eason why it should. As I have said, if a man 
deny any one of the truths involved in these ideas, 
or fail in any way to act under their regulative 
influence, we say that he has lost his reason, and 
surely that must be reason which a man has lost 
when he ceases to be rational. 

Another term that has been used is Common 
Sense. That was used by Reid and the Scotch 
philosophers, when they felt the need of going 
back to first principles in order to meet the skepti- 
cism of Hume. They called that which gives us this 
class of ideas Common Sense, because the ideas be- 
long to all men. And that was a good reason ; but 
here again the term was ambiguous, and, as in the 
other case, preoccupied. Common Sense was then 
universally taken to mean, as it does now, that per- 
ception, apparently without a process, by which 
the average man comes to apprehend the common 
relations, and to conform himself to the common 
proprieties of life. The judgments formed in 
this way seem to be instantaneous and intuitive, 
as those of distance, or, as those formed through 
what is called tact in any particular business when 
once the tact is gained, but they are not intuitive. 
They are the result of a process. Understood in 



NAME OF THE POWER. 77 

this way, common sense is something that may be 
acquired, and in which men may be improved, but 
simulating intuition as it does, the ambiguity was 
unfortunate. The difference was not generally 
perceived even by philosophers; and Priestley, and 
the English generally, ridiculed the Scotch for 
turning philosophy over to common sense. 

Intuition has also been used to indicate tlia 
source of these ideas. This is the term preferred 
by President Porter. It indicates the immediate- 
ness and necessity of the knowledge we gain by it. 
The difficulty with it is that we have other intu- 
itions, as those connected with the operations of 
the senses and with mathematical reasoning. 

Hamilton called it the Regulative Faculty. 
This points to the office of its products as accom- 
panying and regulating all the other operations of 
the mind. The difficulty with this is, that it is not 
a Faculty at all, as not being under the control of 
the will. 

By some German writers Faith has been used 
in this connection, and also by Sir William Ham- 
ilton and Dr. McCosh. By them all it is spoken 
of as a special faculty or power. Hamilton says : 
" Faith — Belief is the organ by which we appre- 
hend what is beyond our knowledge ; " * and he 
refers our belief in the Infinite to that. Dr. 
McCosh does the same, but makes it more gen- 
eral. He says : " It is that operation of the soul 

1 Lect. xxxviii 



78 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

in which we are convinced of the existence of 
what is not before us." Also, that " It is a na- 
tive energy of the mind quite as much as Knowl- 
edge is." * It is much to be desired that this 
term should be freed from its ambiguities, but this 
can never be while it is used to signify any oper- 
ation of the pure intellect, or, if you please, with 
no reference to any estimate of persons. As re- 
lated to Faith, the operations of the Intellect are 
of two kinds. They either give us certainty or 
they do not. If they give us certainty, that is 
Knowledge, and not Faith. If they do not give 
us certainty, then we have mere belief, or opinion, 
and the reasonableness of the belief or the value 
of the opinion will depend on the evidence on 
which it rests.. Is, then, our assent to a propo- 
sition when there is more evidence for it than 
against it Faith ? Certainly not. If any one is 
certain from the operations of his own mind, or in 
any other way, that there is such a thing as what 
we may please to call the Infinite, then he knows 
it as he knows other things. And if so let him 
say so, and not run the whole subject into mysti- 
cism by attributing it to a mysterious principle 
called Faith, and then opposing Faith to Knowl- 
edge. Faith as an energy or principle can neither 
be opposed to Knowledge nor compared with it, 
for Knowledge is a result. There is properly no 
faith till we bring in the element of confidence in 

l Intuitions of the Mind t p. 419. 



THE REASON. 79 

a person. If we believe a thing because a person 
says so, there is faith. Into the confidence we re- 
pose in a person there enters an element of choice 
and of will, which can have no place in any oper- 
ation of the intellect alone in any of its forms, and 
without €hat element there can be nothing that 
ought to be called faith, or that can be, without 
introducing confusion. 

What name then shall we adopt ? On the 
whole I prefer the term Reason, as giving us the 
term rational — not reasonable, which is quite an- 
other thing — and would say that the ideas and 
truths of which we have been speaking are imme- 
diately given, or intuitively apprehended by the 
Reason. 

We next inquire after the function, or office, of 
these ideas and truths. As elemental and condi- 
tional for all mental action, and for the action of 
brutes as well as of men, their office is low, just as 
that of gravitation is low. Certainly the brutes 
know these, so far at least that they are assumed 
in their actions. The only question is, whether 
they consciously recognize them as elements, and 
as involved in all that they are and do. And be- 
cause they are thus elemental no proposition or 
knowledge respecting them can ever be directly 
practical. In the practical question, What is the 
cause of this particular sound ? it is assumed that 
the sound had a cause, that that which caused it 
had being, that that being was in space, and that 



80 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

the causing of it was in time. Neither can we 
make direct use of these ideas and truths as prov- 
ing anything ; but without them the propositions 
necessary for proof could not be framed. They 
have been well compared by Stewart to the lime 
that cements the sand in mortar, or to the vincula 
in a chain, where the links that produce the exten- 
sion do not interlock. Being given by an invol- 
untary process they can be neither proved nor dis- 
proved, but are assumed in every proposition that 
can be thus dealt with. Not being the product 
of experience, except as we must have experience 
in order to know anything, they make experience 
possible and valuable ; they give it coherence. 

With so great a difference in the origin and office 
of that furniture of the mind which is on the left 
side of the perpendicular line I have drawn, we 
should expect to find a similar difference in its 
processes — in the mode and result of its working. 
We should expect to find such a difference that 
they ought not to be called by the same name. 
And that we do find. It seems to me unfortunate 
that such terms as generalization, and induction, 
should be applied to mental acts that have their 
beginning, and middle, and end, in intuition and 
certainty. Generalization and induction may take 
place on the right side of the line, but that which 
characterizes them there is wholly wanting on the 
left side. All proper generalization proceeds on 
the ground of similarity and comparison, but there 



INTUITION NOT INDUCTION. 81 

is no such ground for the movement on the left 
hand side. In all proper induction as we have it 
on the right side of the line, the conclusion be- 
comes more certain by the bringing in of repeated 
instances; and if, in this way, certainty can be 
reached in any case, yet necessity never can. But 
on the left side the certainty is as great at the 
outset as it can ever be, and whatever is affirmed 
as true is seen to be so by necessity. But radical 
as this difference is, able men continue to apply 
the same terms to mental acts on both sides of the 
line, and thus confound things that differ. 

But if there is no generalization or induction on 
the left side, what are the mental acts that take 
place ? It is conceded that we first gain truth in 
the concrete. Our first affirmation is, not that 
space is, separate from body, but that the body is 
in space. What then is the process by which we 
come to the knowledge that every body is in space, 
and must be ? Not by comparison, or general- 
ization, or induction, but by what I should call ex- 
tension — an extension to all subsequent cases of 
the same intuitive and necessary judgment that 
we had to begin with. That every event has a 
cause is no proper generalization gained by com- 
parison. It is a proposition assented to by the 
same necessity as the particular truth, as soon as 
the meaning of the words is understood. But in- 
duction, unless it be by complete enumeration, 
which is frivolous, does not give necessity. The 

6 



82 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

same is true of the affirmation that every event 
must have a cause, and of the infinity of space. 
When the occasion arrives for the mind to affirm 
these, it does it by an intuitive judgment similar 
in nature and authority to those which had gone 
before. The time may be delayed, the occasion 
may not come, but if it does come the judgment is 
intuitive and necessary. 

But the word, being — is not that general, that 
is, formed by generalization ? Not as here used. 
When I affirm for the first time of a body, that it 
is, or exists, or has being, I have received a speci- 
fic, necessary, permanent element in my mind that 
I am compelled to carry with me in all my think- 
ing. I am brought, either actually or potentially, 
face to face with a mystery that never can be 
solved — the mystery of being. That something 
is I know, but can never know how anything 
came to be. Is it said that there is nothing in 
nature that corresponds to the term being? It 
may be replied that everything corresponds to it 
m such a sense that we are compelled to affirm it 
of every new object. But is not this term, being, 
the very one made use of to express the highest 
generalization, the summum genus ? Yes, but that 
is only because, at that point, all that has been 
gained by experience is dropped, and nothing is 
left but that with which we began. 

You will see then that I would separate broadly 
in their origin, and characteristics, the products 
that we find on the left hand side of the line from 



SENSATION. 83 

those on the right. Until that shall be done, I do 
not think that metaphysical subjects can be treated 
of with clearness. In nearly all metaphysical trea- 
tises these products are considered last, but I al- 
ways thought, if I were to write a book on mental 
philosophy, which I never expected to do, I would 
place them first. They are first in the order of 
nature, they are the lowest and most elemental, 
they are involved in all the processes that come 
after, and are needed to explain them. 

Having thus considered the mental acts and 
products on the left hand side of the line — our 
rational intuitions, so far as the intellect alone is 
concerned, we pass to those on the right. Here we 
find Sensation, and Perception, through which we 
gain a knowledge of an external world. By sensa- 
tion we mean the result in consciousness of any af- 
fection of the sensorium. It is a state of mind 
produced through the sensorium by something act- 
ing upon it that is independent of the mind. By 
perception we mean that knowledge which we 
gain of external objects through sensation. Sen- 
sation is what it is felt to be. It is our own state 
in consequence of action from without. Perception 
is a knowledge of the being and state of some- 
thing without ourselves in consequence of action 
from within. What then is it that each sense 
gives ? and how is it that through the senses we 
get a knowledge of an external world ? 



84 AN OUTLINE STUDY OP MAN. 

On these points I do not agree fully with the 
more prominent writers. They are points on 
which you are all qualified to judge. My object 
will be to bring the subject fairly before you, stat- 
ing my own opinion. In doing this, perhaps I can- 
not do better than to take each of the senses sep- 
arately, and inquire what that would give acting 
wholly by itself. In doing this, however, I must 
premise the difficulty there is in making this ab- 
straction perfectly. From the first the senses have 
acted together, and it is most difficult for us to 
imagine the isolation and poverty of one wholly 
alone. A full appreciation of this would, I can- 
not help thinking, have modified the opinions on 
this subject of some able thinkers. 

Let us take, then, the sense of smell, for that is 
the simplest, and what does that give ? Suppose 
a man organized with no sense but this. His 
mind is entirely vacant, as not yet awakened by 
any sensation. There comes to him an odor. 
What would he know in consequence of that? 
Would he know that there was an external world ? 
or a sensorium ? or any being besides himself ? 
Yes, says President Porter. According to him, 
" Every sense gives the knowledge of an extended 
non-e^ro." 1 Others agree with him. I can only 
say that it does not seem so to me. I think the 
man would suppose the sensation to be a feeling 
which arose in him spontaneously, as thought does 

1 Human Intellect, p. 133. 



SENSATION THROUGH TASTE AND HEARING. 85 

He would have no feeling, no eyes, no touch, nc 
motion. His own existence as modified by the 
Bensation he might know, but what one property 
of matter, or of space as external to himself, could 
he know ? This is a simple case. It seems to me 
plain, but if it be not so to others there is no way 
of making it plainer. 

The sense of taste is allied to that of smell by 
the proximity of the organs, and the similarity of 
the sensations they give. They differ in that taste 
is always associated with touch ; smell never. 
But this is incidental. It is because the nerves of 
taste and of touch are inextricably blended. But 
there is a nerve of taste just as there is one of 
smell. That nerve gives taste and nothing else. 
Touch it, and there is no response. If, therefore, 
this nerve could act by itself, taste would be 
nothing more than a smell in the mouth. It 
would be a sensation, which is what it is felt to 
be, and nothing more, and could not be interpreted 
as a sign of anything external and beyond itself. 

But hearing — how is it with that ? Here 
again, there is no touch, and the sensation, by no 
agency of ours, and simply as a sensation, comes 
and goes. With no other agency, standing wholly 
alone, I do not see how the mind could reach any- 
thing through this but the sensation. 

Up to this point I should not be surprised ii 
many, perhaps the most of you, have agreed with 
me, but we now come to sight, and most people 



86 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

believe that by means of that we come at once to 
the knowledge of an external world. Do we? 
Sight is like smell and hearing in not being asso- 
ciated with touch. It gives its own product, and 
that alone. It differs from those senses in our 
having direct control over the organ. We can 
move the eye by itself, and so control and modify 
the sensation it gives. Here, I think, lies the 
main difference on the point in question between 
this sense and the others. If an eye were set in 
stone, and held fixed what would it see ? Color, 
certainly. Some say form. But form of what? 
Nobody supposes that the eye originally gives form 
in more than one dimension — that we see a globe 
or a cube as such. It could be then but a colored 
surface. But under those circumstances what 
could be known of surface or extension ? Could 
the form be anything more than the form of color, 
and would that be known as form at all ? I think 
not. To me it seems that there would be, as in 
the other cases, sensation and nothing more, some- 
thing purely subjective. The sense would not 
perceive or recognize itself. No sense does that. 
It presents its object and nothing else. In the 
case of the eye I think that would be color, and 
that only. 

We next come to touch. Of course when we 
touch a thing we have it. Yes, when we touch it. 
But suppose it touches us. Suppose, as before, the 
whole organization to be encased in stone except 



SENSATION AND PEKCEPTION, 87 

the point of a finger anl then that something 
should touch that point. It must touch merely, 
not press it, for touch is to be carefully distin- 
guished from pressure. Suppose this, and what 
would you have ? A knowledge of anything but 
a mere subjective sensation ? I think not. You 
wuuld have all there is of the sense regarded as 
passive, and it would be as little likely to give us 
externality, or anything that can come under the 
definition of matter as the sense of smell. 

I think a mind thus situated would be in hope- 
less perplexity. If, however, the senses thus act- 
ing would give the knowledge of space and of 
some being besides ourselves, they would not give 
us a knowledge of matter and of the material 
world. 

If, then, we do not get a knowledge of the exter- 
nal world by any one of the five senses, acting 
singly, or by them all acting together, how do we 
get it ? 

My view on this whole subject can be briefly 
stated. I have spoken of sensation as originating 
in a movement from without inward, and of per- 
ception as originating in a movement from within 
outward. This gives us our principle, or rather 
principles, foi there are three propositions that we 
need to state. 

The first is, that whatever originates from with- 
out by no agency of ours, and is communicated to 
us by a movement from without inward, is known 



88 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

as subjective, that is, as a mere sensation, and 
would give us no knowledge of an external or 
material world. 

The second proposition is, that whatever resists, 
or in any way modifies, a muscular movement vol- 
untarily put forth, that is, a movement from within 
outward, is known as objective, and would reveal 
to us an external world, the resistance of course 
being known through the general sensibility as 
distinguished from the sense of touch. In the one 
case we have simply action from without, in the 
other reaction. And this makes a great difference, 
for we thus get the two forms of our life, as passive 
and active. In the first we know ourselves as in a 
state that has come by no power of our will. In 
the second we know ourselves as agents, and thus, 
and thus only come to a knowledge of our proper 
selves. This knowledge of ourselves as agents, 
and of that upon which we are to act, I suppose we 
gain at the same time by one concrete act. At this 
point we come to the knowledge of opposing forces 
and to the beginning of the struggle of life. 

The third proposition is, that after thus gaining 
immediately and necessarily a knowledge of mat- 
ter, that which is subjective, all mere sensations, be- 
come signs the significance of which we learn by 
comparison and experience as we learn a language. 

These propositions I give you as my opinion, 
but without the time, or indeed the wish, to illus- 
trate and defend them. They are simply an opin- 



•'THE ACQUIBED PEBCEPTIONS." 89 

ion, as I do not remember what happened so long 
ago. Many do not receive them, and will not. 
Perhaps the more prevalent opinion is that in all 
sensation we know the sensorium as an extended 
something distinct from ourselves with which we 
yet act in conjunction, and that subsequently we 
gain by experience a knowledge of the other parts 
of the body, and then of a world wholly beyond 
ourselves I The questions at issue here I do not 
regard as of great importance provided we are 
allowed to gain, in some way, an immediate knowl- 
edge of an external and material world. 

The third of the propositions just now stated 
was that all mere sensations are signs, the signifi- 
cance of which we learn as we do a language. 
This many will not accept in full, but they do and 
must accept it in part, as it is illustrated in what 
are called 

THE ACQUIRED PERCEPTIONS. 

This brings us to an interesting subject and I will 
Bay a word upon it. 

Nothing is more admirable than the economy of 
the senses, and by this I mean the small capital 
with which they begin compared with their ulti- 
mate wealth. One reason of this is that each bor- 
rows from all the rest, and often in such a way 
that it is hard to distinguish between the borrowed 
and the original capital. I have already spoken of 
sight in this aspect. This is the richest of the 
senses, and like most rich men in this country, 
began poor. It had originally nothing but oolor, 



90 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

or at best form in one dimension, but it immedi- 
ately begins to borrow, and especially from touch. 
Much the larger part of what sight gives us was 
originally from touch. As has been said, it is only 
by touch that we know a globe to be a globe, a 
cube a cube, or any solid body to be what it is. In 
the same way also, and so only, do we originally 
know hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, 
fluidity, viscidity, heat, cold, and yet all these are 
given by sight, and in such a way that most people 
do not know that they have not always been given 
by it. Sight does, indeed, become a more extended 
touch, so that by it we can know, as by intuition, 
and seemingly by direct perception, the tangible 
properties of distant objects. We can see that the 
polished marble is smooth, and the file hard and 
rough, that water is fluid, and tar sticky, that 
molten iron i$ hot, and snow cold. 

So too sight borrows of the other senses, but 
not so extensively. We see that the rose is fra- 
grant, and the bell sonorous, and that sugar is 
sweet. With some persons the sight of a nauseous 
object acts as an emetic. They see that it is nau- 
seous. And not only does sight thus borrow from 
the other senses, it appropriates, and ultimately 
presents as its own, the products of the judgment. 
This is true of distance. It seems settled that 
some animals have an intuitive knowledge of dis- 
tance. Chickens strike their food at first with the 
same precision as afterwards. It seems equally 



BORROWING BY THE SENSES. 91 

settled that man has not the knowledge of dis- 
tance in this way. He gains it by a process, or 
rather by certain processes, in which size, and dis- 
tinctness, and intervening objects, and probably 
the movement of the eyes as affecting the angle 
of vision, become elements ; but these processes 
become so familiar that we disregard them, and 
notice only the result. That seems to be given 
at once, and as the immediate product of sight. 
Most persons would say, perhaps all who have not 
reflected upon it, that the knowledge of distance 
is as immediate as that of color which we seem to 
see in the distance. And as we gain by sight a 
knowledge of distance that seems immediate, so 
do we of the thoughts and emotions of others. 
What we see is the flush on the cheek, a slight 
change of color merely. What we think of is its 
cause as it reveals, it may be an emotion, it may 
be a purpose. But all this is by acquired percep- 
tion. It is the knowledge of one thing by means 
t>f another, and not direct knowledge We have 
learned it precisely as we have learned the mean- 
ing of words and of letters. The signs by which 
we reach it are a language, and the earliest lan- 
guage learned. It is this very early acquisition of 
the language that sinks its signs and processes so 
far out of sight ; indeed, attention to them would 
defeat the end for which the language was given. 

As was said, sight is the largest borrower, and 
we have seen what vast wealth it gains in this way, 



92 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

but the other senses are not slow in taking up the 
same method. By hearing we come to know 
direction, and distance, and form. The voice of a 
friend, his footstep, his knock, brings him before 
us. The click of the telegraph reveals the oper- 
ator three thousand miles distant. By the ear the 
physician can see what is passing within the body. 
But I need not specify further. Cases in which 
visible and tangible qualities are presented through 
smell and taste will readily occur to you. I will 
only add that when sight is taken away the power 
of the other senses to gain acquired perception is 
greatly quickened. It is marvellous what reach 
and delicacy they will then gain. It was said that 
Julia Brace, in the seminary at Hartford, deaf, 
and dumb, and blind, could distribute the clothes 
by the sense of smell after they had been washed. 
From this extent and reach of the acquired per- 
ceptions we shall readily see how it is that the 
senses are deceived, or are said to be. It is from 
a misinterpretation of signs. Such deception may 
occur in connection with any set of signs, if it be 
possible that the sign should be present without 
the thing signified. So it is sometimes in a paint- 
ing, in an echo, in a stick seeming bent in the 
water, in our own seeming motion when an oppo- 
site car moves ; in the seeming motion of the 
heavens when it is we that move. So also it is 
when the nerves are so affected by disease that we 
seem to see sights and to hear sounds. In all 



A PERCEPT NOT A THING. 93 

these cases the sign is present without the reality, 
but in direct perception this cannot take place. 

After the account just given of perception, you 
will readily see what a percept must be as distin- 
guished from a thing. This is a word that has 
recently come into use, but it is needed. A per- 
cept is what is given by any one sense. The color 
of an object as distinguished from the object is a 
percept. So of its hardness, or form, or odor. 
In a thing, on the other hand, we have a number 
of percepts combined at the same time, in the 
Bame place, and under the idea of substance. To 
form a thing we must have at least three ideas 
from the left hand side of the upright line that I 
drew. This stick has color, form, hardness. Each 
of these is a percept, but to make a thing they 
must be combined at one time and place under the 
idea of substance. To these, other percepts might 
be added. It might have odor and taste, and be 
sonorous, and all would be combined and form 
a part of one notion of the thing. Because our 
notion of the thing is gained through perception 
some have called the thing a percept, but this can 
only cause confusion. A thing is formed, or rather 
our notion of it, by combining in one notion tho 
product of different senses with rational ideas. 
Hence, because the materials are thus gathered 
separately and brought together, and also because 
of the use made of it, perhaps I might as well say 
here that I call it a concept, — an individual con- 



b4 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

cept) to distinguish it from a general one to be 
spoken of hereafter. 1 

We have now dwelt perhaps sufficiently, on 
Sense-perception, through which we get so large 
a part of the furniture of the mind. We have 
seen what the furniture is which we thus get, and 
how we get it. But besides this there is another 
wide department in which we gain immediate, or 
presentative knowledge. We have the power of 
knowing immediately not only the objects around 
us, but also the processes and products of our own 
minds. This power of turning back and making 
the processes and products of the mind the object 
of his thought, of classifying and reasoning about 
them as about external objects, is supposed to be 
peculiar to man. At any rate, it is essential to 
him. It is the condition of self-knowledge, and of 
rational self-government. How else can he know 
what powers are higher, what lower, what are im- 
pulsive, and what governing ? Rational self-gov- 
ernment implies the ability to survey all our pow- 
ers together with their objects, and not merely 
to know what their action is, but to determine 
what it shall be. Full self-knowledge requires 
that we know not only our motives, which per- 
tains to character, but also our powers as they are 
in themselves, as they are related to each other, 
and as adapted to attain the end of our being. 
This brings us into a realm, not only wide, but of 

1 See Schuyler's Logic , p. 17. 



THE INNER SENSE. 95 

the deepest interest, because through tnis we not 
merely know ourselves, but also our fellow-men. 
So far as God has made men alike we have a right 
to judge others by ourselves. That this knowledge 
is immediate all agree. It must be, for nothing 
can come between the mind and its own processes 
and products. 

But what shall we call that faculty, or form of 
the mind's activity, by which we have this knowl- 
edge ? Hamilton calls it Self-consciousness, and so 
does President Porter. To this I object, first, be- 
cause I do not see what consciousness of any kind 
has to do with one kind of knowledge more than 
another; and, second, because a consciousness of 
the operations of the mind is not a consciousness of 
self. The operations of the mind are no more itself 
than external objects are, and when the products 
of mind become objective, or objects to the mind, 
they are like other objects. Hamilton says that 
this power has been called Reflex Perception. This 
is well as putting it in contrast with Sense Percep- 
tion, but it is not properly perception at all. It has 
also been called the Inner Sense. To this there 
would be no objection if we might call Sense Per- 
ception the outer sense. As it is, it is, perhaps, 
the best name we can give. The name is not 
important provided we understand the thing and 
it be not ambiguous, and so, misleading. It is be- 
cause I think it ambiguous and misleading, that 
I object to Self-consciousness. 



96 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 



But call tliis power what we may, we have re- 
vealed through it an inner world more wonderful 
even than that which is without, — a world of in- 
telligence, of comprehension, of feeling, of will, of 
personality, and of moral, instead of physical law. 
It is a world whose phenomena we can study and 
arrange as we do those of the external wcrld ; but 
as in the external world, the phenomena them- 
selves must be immediately given. We must in 
some way intuitively and necessarily know them 
to be. This we do know, and we thus have our 
third and last department and kind of mental fur- 
niture. 

We have now answered, conjointly as we were 
compelled to do, two of the questions originally 
proposed. First, what is in the mind ? and, sec- 
ond, how came it there ? The result may be pre- 
sented to the eye thus, if we suppose the upright 
line to represent a man possessed of intellect only, 
and objects of sense to be presented before him. 






Resemblance. 

Number. 

Per. Identity". 

Time. 

Space. 

Being. 

THE REASON, 

.OR, 

INTUITION, 

OR, THE 

KEG. FACULTY. 



THE INNER SENSE, m w 

OH 

gi 

SENSE PERCEPTION. H g 

s 



' Willing. 

Feeling. 
, Thought. 
' Objects. 

Percepts. 



THE PRESENTATIVE FACULTY. 



Here we have two departments of mental fur- 



THREE DEPARTMENTS. 97 

niture of different origin. The first is given by 
Reason, or Intuition, or the Regulative Faculty, as 
you may please to call it. The second is given by 
the Presentative Faculty. The products of the 
Reason are few. The great mass of our mental 
furniture is given by the Presentative Faculty 
This is divided into two departments : the world 
of sense, and the world of mind, with an infinity 
of objects in each. The products on the right- 
hand side of the upright line differ endlessly in 
different minds, and we combine them in every 
way as we please. Those on the left hand are the 
same in all men.' We cannot manipulate and 
combine them as the others. That is the region 
of necessity. They are given by necessity, we 
must have them to be men. All modifications 
and changes in or among themselves, whatever 
they may be, are by necessity ; and they enter by 
necessity as elements into all our thinking. 

We have thus three departments of mental fur- 
niture with different characteristics and laws. 
We have a 'priori ideas and truths ; we have the 
external world; and the processes of our own 
minds. Each is necessary to the others, and all 
combine in giving us a rational being standing 
face to face with an unlimited universe which he 
is to investigate. 
7 



LECTURE V. 

RECAPITULATION. — CONSCIOUSNESS. — THEORIES, 
BELIEFS, AND PRACTICAL RESULTS. 

In investigating mind we have now answered 
two questions : first, What is in the mind ? and 
second, How did it get there ? We say that there 
are in the mind necessary ideas, and that in con- 
nection with them we reach necessary truths. 
These ideas come, not by sensation or perception, 
but on the occasion of them. They are given by 
the native power of the mind as an original source 
of ideas. They are not innate, but the mind is 
so pre-formed that it necessarily originates these 
ideas. The truths are self-evident and necessary. 
Neither the ideas nor the truths are reached by 
what is properly a faculty, as it is not subject to 
the control of the will. We call that which gives 
them Reason, Intuition, the Regulative Faculty. 

Then we have that furniture of the mind which 
is gained through sensation and perception. This 
we have in two ways : directly through perception, 
indirectly through sensation. That which comes 
through perception I hold that we get immediately, 
intuitively, necessarily, through that power of 
motion by which we know ourselves as causes, and 



DIRECT PERCEPTION BY CONTACT. 99 

through, that resistance of bodies by which we 
know them, not as causes in the same sense in 
which we are, but as substances. Motion originat- 
ing in us presupposes a cause in us. It also im- 
plies space, and as necessarily as body does. It 
implies both time and space ; and resistance to mo- 
tion made by our own effort gives us a permanent 
substance out of ourselves and other than ourselves, 
which is matter. According to this, direct percep- 
tion takes place only when there is contact, with 
pressure. All besides that is called perception is 
indirect. This knowledge some impute to what is 
now called the muscular sense. It comes, indeed, 
on the occasion of resistance to muscular effort, and 
is commonly confounded with what is given by the 
sense of touch; but sensation is not perception. 
Sensation is on the occasion of a movement from 
without inward ; direct perception is on the occa- 
sion of a movement from within outward, and is 
an immediate recognition of substance as external 
to ourselves. Mere sensation, being wholly within 
us, with no sense of effort from within, and with 
no resistance or pressure from wdthout, which is 
all that any one of the five senses really gives, 
would give us cause, whether within or from with- 
out perhaps we could not tell, but it would not give 
us substance external to ourselves. 

You thus see that I hold to an immediate knowl- 
edge of an external world rationally and necessa- 
rily obtained ; and also how I do this without at- 



100 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

tributing it to any one of what are called the five 
senses. The notices given by them I regard as a 
Bet of signs to be interpreted, as a language to be 
learned, and not as giving us immediate and neces- 
sary knowledge except Ox some cause — not neces- 
sarily of anything without us. Not simply by sen- 
sation, but by an operation proceeding from within 
outward, involving the action of the mind as ra- 
tional, bringing in the ideas of cause, of substance, 
and of space do I suppose that the mind takes cog- 
nizance by its native power of something that is 
not itself. I suppose the mind is thus introduced 
to material substance as that which it is to control, 
and to space as the field in which it is to control it. 
It is, as I think, because the proof of an external 
world has been made to rest on a set of signs that 
need to be interpreted, rather than on immediate 
knowledge that it has been possible, as so many 
philosophers have done, to deny the existence of 
an external world. The distinction has not been 
properly made between the immediate perception 
of substance and its mediate perception through 
something intermediate. 

The furniture of the mind given by perception 
as now explained is contingent and variable. 
That which is in the mind of one man may differ 
entirely from that which is in the mind of an- 
other, so that those things which have been fa- 
miliar from infancy to one may be unknown to 
another, or may be regarded as a curiosity. I re- 



THE MIND FURNISHED. 101 

member to have heard Mr. Everett say, when he 
was President of Harvard College, that a boy from 
one of the Rice Islands of the South was com- 
mended to his special care, and that when he asked 
him the morning after he came what he would 
like to see, he said he thought he should like to see 
some rocks, and so he sent him over to Nahant. 

Then we have, in the third place, besides the 
knowledge of an external world, an immediate 
knowledge of the operations of our own minds, of 
our thoughts, our feelings, and our volitions. And 
this again is a vast world, contingent and variable, 
and not the same for any two men. 

These two, the outer and the inner sense, com- 
monly called sense-perception and self -consciousness, 
make up what is called the Presentative Faculty, or 
the Faculty of immediate knowledge. Some faculty 
by which we know immediately and necessarily we 
must have if we are to know at all. When we 
know thus we are said to have presentative knowl- 
edge, and the Presentative Faculty is divided into 
those two branches or departments by which we 
get a knowledge of the external and the internal 
worlds. By these, or by this, together with The 
Reason, the mind is furnished, and we thus answer 
the two questions, What is in the mind ? and, How 
did it get there ? We thus give our solution of the 
vexed problem of the origin of knowledge. 

Materials being thus given, the next inquiry 
would naturally be, what operations the mind can 



102 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

perform with those materials. But there is one 
operation having relation not so much to the ma- 
terial as to the mind itself, and so involved in all 
the others that it stands by itself and will need to 
be understood before we shall be ready to go on to 
the consideration of what are properly the opera- 
tions of the mind upon the materials given. That 
operation is what is commonly called 

CONSCIOUSNESS. 

This is not a condition for the other operations 
of the mind, and so needing to be considered be- 
fore them. They are a condition for it, since, in 
the order of nature, the mind must know before it 
can be conscious of knowing. Nothing within the 
mind is, or can be, a condition of the operations 
of the mind but the mind itself. The condition of 
knowing is a mind endowed with the faculty of 
knowing ; and the condition of consciousness is an 
operation of the mind of which it can be con- 
scious. 

What then is consciousness ? As universal, and 
as thus intimate to the mind, we might suppose 
it would be among the plainest of all things, but 
instead of this there is nothing in which writers 
are less agreed. What then do we mean by it ? 
Can we find a definition that will enable us to be 
consistent with ourselves in the use of the term ? 
I know of no writer on this subject who has been 
thus self-consistent. 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 103 

Whatever Consciousness may be, there are three 
characteristics attributed to it by common con- 
sent, and these it must have. The first is, as its 
etymology, <?<m-scio, implies, that it can never be 
alone. It must always accompany some other 
operation of the mind, and does in fact equally ac- 
company all mental operations. The second char- 
acteristic is that it must be infallible. It must be 
something that never does, or can, deceive us. In 
this all are agreed, for, if our consciousness can 
deceive us, there is nothing between us and univer- 
sal skepticism. The third characteristic is that 
consciousness is not a separate faculty. A separate 
faculty has its own domain, and is subject to the 
will. It is not a faculty, but is involuntary ; is alike 
in all the race ; and is a necessary act concomitant 
with all mental acts of which we know anything. 
It has an equal and common relation to all the 
faculties. 

We inquire then, first, is Consciousness, as is 
said by Sir William Hamilton, " the knowing that 
we know ? " He says that consciousness differs 
from knowledge in this : in knowledge we know, 
and in consciousness we know that we know. But 
if the act of knowledge does not suffice to itself, it 
can avail nothing to have another act of knowl- 
edge back of that. No one can know without 
knowing that he knows, and nothing is gained by 
thus dividing and giving names to the two as- 
pects of one indivisible act. But Hamilton went 



104 , AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN, 

further, and the main peculiarity of his view is that 
in being conscious that we know, we are also con- 
scious of the thing known, or of that which the 
knowledge respects. Thus, our knowledge of a 
table, according to him, includes a consciousness of 
the table. He said it was absurd to assume to 
be conscious of knowing the table without being 
conscious of the thing known, thus giving us, as 
you see, the evidence of consciousness for the ex- 
istence of an external world. This was thought 
important as being decisive against the Idealists 
and all those who deny the existence of anything 
external to the mind. But this is to confound 
consciousness with perception. If we do not have 
by direct perception a knowledge of the external 
world that suffices to itself we can never have it 
at all. If we do, then consciousness is not needed 
for that purpose. 

We inquire then, again, is not Consciousness a 
knowledge by the mind of its own operations? 
That is the common definition. " The most gen- 
eral characteristic," says Hamilton, " of conscious- 
ness, is that it is the recognition by the thinking 
subject of its own acts or affections." 1 So 
President Porter says, " Consciousness is briefly 
defined as the power by which the soul knows its 
own acts and states." But in saying this they 
seem to confound their definition of consciousness 
with that which they give of self -consciousness, or 
what I have called the inner sense, regarded as 3 

* Lect. xi. p. 139. 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 105 

branch of the Presentative Faculty. Hamilton 
says that " self -consciousness is the power by which 
we apprehend the phenomena of the internal 
world." 1 How, I ask, does this differ from his 
definition of consciousness just given? And Pres- 
ident Porter says (Sec. 64) : " The presentative 
faculty is subdivided into sense perception and 
consciousness, or, as they are sometimes called, the 
outer and the inner sense." This seems to me to 
be a confounding of the two by these eminent 
men, and I quote them only to show the need of 
care at this point. Consciousness has no more to 
do with that " knowledge of the internal world " 
given, according to Hamilton, by self-conscious- 
ness, and according to President Porter, by con- 
sciousness regarded as a part of the Presentative 
Faculty, than it has with our knowledge of the 
external world, since it accompanies both equally. 
Consciousness as much accompanies my knowledge 
of an external world as it does my knowledge of 
what is passing within myself. Here is a separ- 
ate department of knowledge. It is of that which 
takes place within myself. Here is another de- 
partment. It is of that which is without myself ; 
and the knowledge of each is equally accompanied 
by consciousness. Can, then, the knowledge of 
either, or of one more than the other, be con- 
sciousness ? I think not. Certainly not without a 
confusion of terms. That consciousness is gener- 

1 Lect xxix. p. 401. 



106 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

ally regarded as giving a knowledge of the in- 
ternal world I do not deny. This has come to 
pass because it is convenient, and because such 
knowledge is always present as a condition of con- 
sciousness. Nor will it be easy, or perhaps possible, 
to change the usage; but if we are to think or 
write clearly we cannot give to consciousness its 
own department of knowledge and also make it 
pervade all the other departments. 

Is not consciousness then an inward witness 
or light ? So some have said. So Cousin said ; 
and he said it because it was so pervasive in its 
character. This, however, is figurative language, 
and is so far from precision as to need no farther 
notice here. 

Once more, is not consciousness one of those 
original and primitive ideas of which we have 
spoken ? Should it not be placed as such on tlie 
left hand side of our line ? This has been said ; 
but since consciousness accompanies our knowledge 
of those ideas in the same way as it accompanies 
our other knowledge, if consciousness were one of 
them we should need another consciousness back 
of that, and so on forever. 

What then is consciousness ? Is there any one 
power of the mind or mode of its activity that pos- 
sesses the three characteristics already mentioned 
as belonging to consciousness. We think there is , 
and would define consciousness to be the knowl- 
edge by the mind of itself as the permanent and 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 107 

indivisible subject of its own operations. This im- 
plies a knowledge of the operations, but leaves 
that knowledge to be given by its own specific 
faculty while consciousness holds the whole in 
unity by a constant reference of the different acts 
and states of the mind to the indivisible self or 
ego. According to this the formula of conscious- 
ness will be, not " I know that I know," but I 
know that it is I that know, and I know that it 
is the same I that knows, that also feels and wills. 
This knowledge of the self as the subject and cen- 
tre of mental operations will have no reference to 
the validity or trustworthiness of those operations. 
We have our faculties. We know by perception ; 
we know by memory. We know immediately, we 
know mediately ; but if our faculty of knowledge, 
whatever it be, does not suffice to itself, it cannot 
be supplemented by consciousness. That has an- 
other field ; it belongs to another sphere. Its office 
is to bind all the operations of the mind into unity. 
It does for the mind just what the cellular system 
does for the body. You will remember what I 
said about that. As I stated, the cellular mem- 
brane is found in connection with every part of 
the body. It enfolds, for instance, each fibre of the 
muscles. It is never by itself. It always accom- 
panies something else, is for the sake of something 
else ; and it gives unity to the body. And con- 
sciousness does the same thing for the mind. It 
is, as it were, its cellular membrane, combining 



108 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

everything connected with it into unity; never 
found by itself, but always present in connection 
with every other mental operation. Hence, as I 
said, it is not a faculty. It is not under the con- 
trol of the will. It is not anything that comes* 
to us in any sense or degree through the operation 
of will. We have it from the beginning; we 
have it by necessity ; and one man has it as much 
as another. Hence there cannot be different kinds 
of consciousness. If you choose to say self-con- 
sciousness, and give that a special field of knowl- 
edge, very well. You can then give attention to it 
or not, as you please, but consciousness, as just de- 
fined, is automatic and admits of no diversity. 

What I have now called consciousness has always 
been known as one of the elements of what has 
been so called, but it needs to be separated ; and, 
so far as I can judge, until that shall be done, and 
the term shall come to designate this, and this 
alone, it will be impossible to speak or write on 
this subject without confusion. Very possibly the 
discrimination I have made is not the right one. 
I could not accept what had been done, and have 
made it rather than sit down in despair. We 
must go on until we understand what this cardi- 
nal, universal operation of the mind is. In order 
to this we must separate it from everything else, 
and agree upon the elements to which we will give 
the name. So only can we make progress, and 
come out into a clear understanding of the ques- 
tions which we discuss on these abstract subiects. 



PASSAGE FROM KNOWLEDGE TO BEING. 109 

-If what has now been said of consciousness be 
correct, it is plain that in adding it to our scheme, 
as we now do, we must write it as we did the 
cellular membrane, giving it the same relation to 
the mental faculties and their operations that the 
cellular membrane has to the bodily systems and 
their functions. 



I have now stated continuously what I believe in 
regard to three of the great questions which have 
divided the philosophic world, and which still di- 
vide it. The first relates to the origin of knowl- 
edge ; the second to the mode of our communica- 
tion with the external world ; and the third to 
consciousness. The discussions on the subject of 
consciousness are recent, and what I have said con- 
cerning that involves what has been said by others ; 
but those on the other two subjects are ancient, 
and concerning them, especially the first, philoso- 
phers have been divided from the beginning. And 
that these discussions are not wholly speculative we 
shall see if we notice how the views I have pre- 
sented on the first two points will either set aside, 
or solve the theories and questions, that have been 
proposed at different times. 

In the first place the view 7 have taken of the 
origin of knowledge sets aside the question of 
which Cousin makes so much, about what he calls 
" the passage from knowledge to being.'* He 



110 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

seems to regard that as the great question of phi- 
losophy. According to him we know without 
knowing being, and it is a great thing to make a 
Bafe passageway over from knowledge to being. 
But if we accept what has been said we set aside 
that question altogether because we do not know 
at all except as we know being. In knowing at 
all we know ourselves to be. In perception we 
know matter to be, and we know the subject as we 
know the attribute, one as much as the other. We 
know them in one concrete act, and so there is no 
such bridge needed as has been furnished us. 

In the second place, our solution of the problem 
of the origin of knowledge is that we have knowl- 
edge of three kinds as is seen in the diagram, and 
that the mind is itself a source of ideas and of 
truths. On this point there have been two schools 
from the time of Plato and Aristotle, Plato believ- 
ing that ideas existed before the several classes of 
objects, and that those objects became what they 
were by partaking of those ideas ; and Aristotle, on 
the other hand, believing that all the furniture of 
mind came through the senses. These, at least, 
are the views commonly imputed to these two phi- 
losophers. Locke has been supposed by the conti- 
nental philosophers to hold that all our knowledge 
originates in sensation, and that the furniture of 
the mind consists only of sensations and modified 
sensations. To this English writers generally 
have not agreed ; and certainly Locke uses language 



ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE. Ill 

by which either view may be sustained. Possibly 
the question had not fully cleared itself up in his 
own mind. Liebnitz, on the other hand, was dis- 
tinctly on the other side. Accordingly, when the 
formula was stated, supposed to be that of Locke, 
that " there is nothing in the understanding that 
was not previously in the sense," Liebnitz said, 
" except the understanding itself." There was the 
mind itself as a source of ideas in distinction from 
those it got from sensation. So in our time, the 
two schools continue ; and we have had Hamilton 
on the one side and Mill on the other with their 
respective followers. It is remarkable that there 
should have been, and should continue to be, such 
a diversity of view on a point like this. 

The interest in this question is not merely specu- 
lative. If it had been it would probably have 
died out long ago. It is mainly derived from the 
tendencies of the two schools. Connected with the 
origin of knowledge in sensation there has been a 
tendency to materialism, to sensualism, to a low 
standard of morality, and to the denial of a here- 
after. Connected with what has been called the 
spiritual philosophy, or, sometimes, transcendent- 
alism, there has been a tendency to idealism, to 
mysticism, to excursions into cloud-land, to forms 
of expression, oracular and obscure, and to an un- 
due exaltation of reason. Men have assumed as 
the product of reason what was not ; they have 
made out of ideas received in this way, or sup- 



112 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

posed to be thus received, a kind of inspiration, 
and have become conceited and dogmatic. As 
everything known in this way is known infallibly, 
they cease to be concerned about being consistent 
with themselves. They say, " We know this ; we 
see it to be so." Yes, but did you not see another 
thing the other day inconsistent with that. " Wei 
do not know whether we did or not. If we did, 
no matter; this is true." This is presumption. 
These are the two tendencies ; but as we solve the 
question, you see how, by the tests applied, the 
mind is kept in a state of sobriety, and held down 
to the truth. 

Now comes the second question. How does the 
mind communicate with the external world, and 
what does it know about it ? And here it will be 
seen that I stand with Hamilton as a " natural 
realist," believing in the immediate knowledge — 
not as Hamilton says, consciousness — but in the 
immediate knowledge of both a me and a not-me 
of an ego and a non-ego. Hamilton believed in 
an immediate and simultaneous apprehension of 
two things — of himself and of the world. I 
agree to that, but I do not agree at all to his view 
about the senses, or about the relativity of knowl- 
edge. What is this doctrine of the relativity of 
knowledge ? It is that what we know we know 
as it is related to our senses, and our faculties, and 
not as it is in itself. That this is true of much oi 
our knowledge no one will doubt* It is because 



MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM. 113 

of this that " there is no disputing about tastes." 
But, affirmed of knowledge universally, as he af- 
firms it, it would land us in our not being sure 
fchat we know anything at all. Do I then know 
that the \Yhole is equal to the sum of all its parts, 
or that a body must be in space, as something that 
is relative to my mode of apprehension ? or do I 
know it as something which is so in itself, and 
which must be known to be so by all rational be- 
ings ? I have no hesitation in saying the latter ; 
nor in saying, further, that, whatever may be pos- 
sible for others, it would not be possible for me to 
hold to the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, 
without passing over into skepticism. 

And not only does our mode of statement set 
aside the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, 
but also that of materialism on the one hand, and 
of idealism on the other. Some have believed 
that there is nothing but matter. These are the 
materialists. Others, as Berkeley, have believed 
that there is no such thing as matter. These are 
the idealists. Seeking for a knowledge of matter 
through some one of the senses by a movement 
originating from without, and not finding it, and 
not having reached the distinction between the 
two movements from without and from within, and 
their results, they regard the whole process of 
knowledge, through the senses, as illusory. The 
notices of the senses they regard, not as a set of 
signs to be interpreted with reference to something 



114 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

back of them, but as wholly an illusion. These 
two views, especially that of idealism, have been 
extensively held. 

But besides materialism and idealism, there are 
other forms of belief that are at once set aside by 
this doctrine of Natural Realism, or the immedi- 
ate and simultaneous apprehension of both sub- 
ject and object. Of these one is what is called 
the theory of Identity. This affirms that mind 
and matter, subject and object, are the same thing. 
Those holding this hold to a power of causation in 
tnatter similar to that of mind, whereas matter, 
whatever may be said of its dynamics, is not, in 
any proper sense, causative at all. It has no power 
of originating anything. It moves only as it is 
moved upon. This distinction, and this only, ex- 
plains, as I suppose, the doctrine of second causes. 
A second cause is neither spontaneous, nor volun- 
tary, but moves only as it is moved upon, whereas 
a first cause is self-moved. This, as I have said 
before, is a fundamental distinction between mind 
and matter, and while those who would break it 
down by a theory of identity may not be panthe- 
ists, yet their doctrine tends, and would logically 
lead to pantheism. 

Then there is the doctrine of Nihilism, and I 
mention it that you may see to what extremes wise 
men — shall I say ? — no, I will not say that, but 
men who call themselves philosophers — may run 
when they abandon their primary convictions and 



THE IDEAL THEORY. 115 

reason logically from assumed premises. Rejecting 
Reason and its intuitions, and seeking in vain for 
substance through sensation, the Nihilists believe 
that there is neither mind nor matter. But this 
is absurd, since a man who denies his own exist- 
ence has no right to affirm or deny anything. 

But the theory regarding perception, that has 
created more discussion than any other, has re- 
spected, not so much its result, as its mode. The 
larger number of philosophers have believed in an 
external and substantial world as given by percep- 
tion, but have supposed that the thing perceived 
was not the object itself, but something interme- 
diate. Than this theory nothing can be more 
natural if we suppose perception to take place 
through any oiie or all of the five senses. We do 
see by means of an image, and hear by means of 
vibrations, and smell by means of odoriferous par- 
ticles. The theory had its name, " Ideal theory," 
from the sense of sight, and drew its chief support 
from that. Reid was first led to examine, and 
then to attack it, as furnishing the chief ground to 
Berkeley of his denial of matter ; and then to 
Hume of the denial of both matter and mind. 
Hamilton followed, and his refutation of this 
theory, in both its forms, is among the great ser- 
vices he rendered to philosophy. 

On this subject there is a remariiable form of 
belief in our day — that of Mill and his followers. 
It is remarkable as combining Sensationalism with 



116 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

Idealism, Mill is a sensationalist. According to 
him there is nothing in the mind that is not the 
direct product of sensation and experience, and 
yet he denies the existence of anything but 
phenomena, and even of anything but subjec- 
tive phenomena. As illustrating what this form 
of belief is in itself, and in its results, perhaps I 
may be permitted to quote from a work of Mr, 
Taine 2 just published, and which I had not seen 
till I came to the city. Concerning matter or 
body he says : " Certain possibilities, and certain 
necessities of sensations — to these are reducible 
the powers, consequently the properties, conse- 
quently the very substance of bodies " (p. 280). 
Here he speaks of bodies, but what is body? 
" A power then is nothing intrinsic and personal 
to the object to which we attribute it. Conse- 
quently a collection of powers is nothing, conse- 
quently a body, that is to say a collection of 
powers, is nothing " (p. 279). But how do we 
come to know this body which is thus nothing ? 
14 No doubt," he says, "we know nothing of ani- 
mate or inanimate beings except from the sensa- 
tions they give us" (p. 296). And again: "A sen- 
sation, and notably a tactual or visual sensation, 
engenders by its presence alone an internal phantom 
which appears an external object " (p. 264). But 
how about the internal world ? " Our successive 
events," he says, " are then successive components 

i On Intelligence. By Henri Taine. 



THE EGO. MILL AND TAINE. 117 

of ourselves. The ego is, in turn, each of these 
events. At one moment, as was clearly seen by 
Condillac, it is nothing more than the sensation of 
taste v at the second moment nothing more than 
suffering ; at the third, nothing more than the 
recollection of the concert " (p. 205). Again he 
says : " The Ego is nothing more than the contin- 
uous web " — though how he gets a web I do not 
see — but " the continuous web of its successive 
events. If we consider it at a given moment, it 
is nothing more than a portion severed from its 
web, some salient sensation among others less sali- 
ent, some preponderant image among others about 
to fade away " (p. 207). Again he says : " We 
have already seen that what constitutes a distinct 
being is a distinct series of facts and events " (p. 
294). Now attend to what pan is in full : " This 
man is 1st, the permanent possibility of tactual, 
visible, and other sensations which I experience in 
his neighborhood ; and further, he is a distinct 
series of sensations, images, and volitions conjoined 
to the tendencies by which this series is accom- 
plished" (p. 366). Now if you do not know 
what man is it is not my fault. 

Finally, to show the tendency of this doctrine 
and the reach of this class of questions, he says : 
" We are disposed to conceive of it " (the Ego) 
" as a distinct thing, stable, and independent of its 
modes of being, and even capable of subsisting 
after the series from which it is derived has dis« 



118 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

appeared." It is not fair to charge a man with 
holding what we may think the legitimate conse- 
quences of his doctrine if he disavows those con- 
sequences. I know nothing of Mr. Taine, or of 
others holding similar doctrines as regards their 
belief in immortality and accountability, but it is 
fair to state what we think does legitimately flow 
from such doctrines, and what would be the result 
of their general reception. And I have no doubt 
that if men suppose they are nothing, and that 
their minds are nothing but the successive states 
of sensation that they are in, they will suppose 
that when the organization ceases the mind ceases. 
They will find involved in the doctrine a virtual 
denial of any proper personality or accountability 
either here or hereafter ; and, so far as mere spec- 
ulative belief can pi^vail against the native in- 
stincts and tendencies of the mind, the doctrine 
will involve the destruction of the moral sense of 
the community. 



We have now finished one part of our work. 
We have furnished the Intellect. We have seen 
what is in it, and how*it got there. We have 
also shown how our mental operations are bound 
into unity by consciousness, and have explained the 
nature of that. We have attempted a separation 
of that knowledge by the mind of its own opera- 
tions, which is a separate field of knowledge and 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 119 

known by a separate faculty from that knowledge, 
by the mind of itself which is not by a faculty, 
but is native and necessary and common to all. 
In common discourse both these are included as 
given by consciousness, and without inconvenience, 
but for the purposes of philosophy a separation is 
needed, both in the thing, and in the name. That 
which gives the first has been called by Hamilton, 
and others, self-consciousness, but to avoid con- 
fusion we have called it the inner sense. That 
which gives the other I have ventured to call con- 
sciousness because that, and that only justifies tho 
name by accompanying all other mental opera- 
tions. It is a knowing of the mind by itself as 
the subject of its own operations at the same time 
that it knows those operations. How far it may 
be possible to change, or wise to attempt to 
ehange the usage in respect to language I do not 
know ; but the time has come when it is essential 
to clear thinking that the things should be distin 
guished. 

I refer, in closing, to the very brief and impei- 
fect account I have given of the theories respecting 
the origin of knowledge, and the modes of percep- 
tion. Those theories seemed to me to enter too 
largely into the, history of human thought to be 
omitted entirely, and yet the limits of the course 
would not permit me to treat of them adequately. 
I can only hope that enough was said to show 
how the most abstruse speculations connect them- 



120 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

selves with questions that are vital to society, and 
also to show how beautiful, and simple, and safe, 
nature and truth are, when compared with the 
speculations of man. True, the process of dis- 
covery has not always been from apprehended 
complexity to simplicity, but it was so in Astron- 
omy ; so it has been hitherto in mental science, 
and so, I believe, it will continue to be. 



LECTURE VI. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE FACULTY. — CONTROL OF 
THE WILL OYER THE MENTAL CURRENT. 

Haying now answered the two questions, What 
is in the mind regarded as intellect ? and, How did 
it get there ? we are prepared to pass to the third 
question as originally stated. What operations 
can we perform with the materials thus in the 
mind ? That the materials should be in the mind 
is clearly a condition for the performance of any 
operation with those materials. 

But we must first inquire in what sense any 
thing is in the mind. It is not there as money 
is in your pocket, that is, if you have any there. 
That is something that you put there, and it 
abides, and you take out the same piece you 
put in. But is there anything in the mind? 
You learned the multiplication table once. Is it 
in your mind when you are not thinking about it ? 
You know nothing about it. You can recreate 
it ; you can say it when called upon, but it is a 
new thing. 

But call it what you will, there is a power in 
the mind by which it reproduces states in which 
it has once been ; or, more accurately, by which 
it returns to similar states while it knows itself 



122 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

to be the same mind. Having then been once in 
a particular state of knowing, or feeling, or will- 
ing, the mind has the power of re-presenting, or 
re-producing those states. Hence we have 

THE REPRESENTATIVE FACULTY. 

Hamilton interposes a Conservative faculty by 
which that which is in the mind is preserved there, 
but we know nothing of the operation of such a 
faculty. He also speaks of a Reproductive, as 
distinguished from a Representative faculty. But 
that is not needed. What we know, and all that 
we know, is, that when the mind has once been in 
a state of knowing, or feeling, or willing, it may, 
on certain conditions, be caused to return to a 
similar state. The state and its product, if we 
distinguish the two, may be so similar that they 
shall seem identical, and the language used con- 
cerning them shows that they are supposed to be 
identical. What we need then is a faculty which 
shall bring back those states of mind which we 
have previously had, that knowledge which we 
have once acquired; and to do that is the office 
of the Representative Faculty. 

Through this Representative Faculty, in con- 
nection with other agencies, when once the mind 
is set in motion, there is a constant succession of 
thoughts, of feelings, of volitions, passing on in a 
flow as constant as the flow of a river, and as in- 
dependent of our wills. We can no more cease to 



DUALITY OF OUK NATUKE. 123 

think than we can stop the planets from revolving* 
We may think about one thing and not about 
another, but think we must. In this respect the 
mind is like the body. You will remember that 
I pointed out the involuntary powers of the body. 
There are also involuntary powers of the mind 
analogous to them. The involuntary powers of 
the body furnish the material for the upbuilding 
of its voluntary systems and powers; they fur- 
nish the material. And so the involuntary pow- 
ers of the mind furnish the material on which its 
voluntary powers act. They give the material, 
and form the condition of all those operations 
by which we recognize ourselves, and by which 
we have character. # 

And here we finfl that double aspect, or more 
properly, duality of our nature, by which a man 
is called upon to govern himself. This, if suffi- 
ciently understood, Jias not been sufficiently in- 
sisted upon and illustrated. It is a wonderful 
fact in our constitution, making a distinctive dif- 
ference between man and the brutes. Possibly I 
can illustrate it. 



Let us suppose the space on the left-hand side 
of the two upright lines to represent a vast un- 
known, and the space on the right-hand side to 



124 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

represent the region of personality. Let the hori- 
eontal line A, represent those involuntary move- 
ments, the current I have spoken of, bringing with 
it thought, feeling, impulse, desire. All these move 
on. They come by no will of yours. A man pro- 
vokes you, perhaps strikes you, how many im- 
pulses, feelings, thoughts, passions, this calls up ! 
They come of themselves. You do not will them. 
You, represented by the shorter upright line B., 
stand above the stream at the point of its entrance 
and you watch them as they come in. The in- 
stant they come you see them, and one you ap- 
prove and another you disapprove. Of the one 
you say, I accept it ; and you cherish it. To the 
other you say Down [ down ! You will have noth- 
ing to do with it, and so ybu control yourself. 
Now do you not see that the stream which thus 
comes in and is moving on without any volition 
of yours is yourself ; and that that which stands 
above and watches it is you ? That is the differ- 
ence between you and yourself ; at least when we 
refer to the voluntary and involuntary movements 
of the mind. This involuntary current it is that 
is the source of dreams, of reveries, of fantasies, 
of insanity. When a man becomes insane, cer- 
tain ideas, springing up involuntarily, become con- 
tinuous and persistent, and overmaster him. He 
has no control over himself. The ideas become 
realities to him and govern him instead of his gov- 
erning them. Often the struggle is long between 



THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL. 125 

a man and these illusions ; and doubtless many 
have been saved from insanity by a resolute will ; 
but the moment he gives way he passes into one 
of the saddest and most humiliating conditions 
that belongs to our humanity. This is a mysteri- 
ous part of our nature. There are phenomena 
connected with it that are not now, and probably 
never will be fully understood. This it is that 
brings in temptation. To this, in the form that is 
strongest at the moment, some men give them- 
selves up, while others struggle during their whole 
lives against its suggestions and promptings. A 
most blessed thing it would be, would it not ? if 
this part of our nature, which is indeed nature 
and nothing else, were never to present to us any- 
thing which we should need to reject ; if we could 
always say to everything thus presented, Yes^yes. 
But it is not thus with any one of us. It was not 
always thus with the Apostle Paul even. He 
could say in view of that which thus presented 
itself, as well as of the infirmity of purpose in 
that to which it was presented, " Oh, wretched 
man that I am." 

Now the inquiries that will occupy us to-night 
are mainly four. 

First. What is it that determines the materials 
and order of this current when that is presented 
which has been before in the mind ? 

Second. What forms do the materials thus 
brought into the mind assume, either of themselves 
or under the direction of the will ? 



126 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

Tliird. What is there besides the laws of asso- 
ciation and our own wills, that influences the whole 
mental current ? 

Fourth. What power has the will over the whole 
mental current — these materials, and this order ? 

First, then, of Representation. Do the mate- 
rials that have once been in the mind come into it 
again fortuitously, or by some law ? They often 
seem to come fortuitously. Nothing can be more 
capricious, or whimsical, or disconnected, than the 
odd fancies of our waking hours, to say nothing of 
our dreams. It is supposed, however, that under 
this seeming caprice there is always some law at 
work; and this leads us to consider the law, or 
rather laws of what has been called the 

# ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 

And by ideas as here used is meant, not merely 
intellectual states, but also states of feeling and of 
will. In connection, then, with what ideas or 
principles are former mental states reproduced ? 

First, if two things are presented at the same 
time, and then, afterwards, one of those things pre- 
sents itself, we shall be led to think of the other 
also. 

Therefore we have 

TIME, 

as one of what have been called the associating 
principles. It matters not that the two ideas have 



CASUAL ASSOCIATION. 127 

no other relation than that of time, they will in- 
troduce each other. If I see a flock of wild geese 
go over and there comes a storm immediately 
after, or if winter sets in, the next time I see the 
geese I shall think of the storm, or of the setting 
in of winter. It is in this way that what are 
called casual associations arise and become estab- 
lished in the minds of the community. It is in 
this way that signs, in distinction from causes, come 
to have the power over the minds of men that 
they have, and that various superstitions and 
quackeries arise. Two things are seen at the same 
time or in immediate succession, and afterwards 
come to be associated whether they have any con- 
nection in nature or not. Friday, you know, is 
considered an unlucky day. I do not know how 
it originated, but the association became estab- 
lished, and now there are many cultivated persons 
who will not, if they can avoid it, start on a jour- 
ney on Friday. As communities become enlight- 
ened such associations give place to the inductions 
of science, but the number still remaining among 
us, based on this relation of time, is very great. 

But the relation of time is not the only one on 
which casual associations are based. There is also 
that of place, and these two are generally com- 
bined. It is impossible for us to visit the place 
where an event of interest has occurred to us with- 
out thinking of that event, and it is because we 
thus associate events with places, that places have 



128 AN OUTLINE STUDY OP MAN. 

a historic interest. But for this, Plymouth Rock, 
Rome, Jerusalem, would be but as other places. 
But while both these principles are natural and 
necessary, they furnish a soil into which supersti- 
tion and folly so readily strike their roots that if 
we wei«* to take from the history of the world 
their results as based on these two relations it 
would be quite another thing. We put down 
then as a second associating principle, 

PLACE. 

Again if we see a man to-day, and to-morrow 
see another who resembles him, we shall think of 
the man whom he resembles. Hence we put down 

RESEMBLANCE 

as a third principle of association. This is wider 
and more extensive than any other. 
A fourth principle is that of 

CONTRAST. 

Heat reminds us of cold, poverty of riches, labor 
of rest, time of eternity, hope of despair This is 
the opposite of resemblance. 

A fifth associating principle is that of 

CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

These are correlative terms, and so imply each 
other. The cause reminds us of the effect, the 
effect of the cause. 



PRINCIPLES OF ASSOCIATION. ' 129 

In the same way 

MEANS AND END 

are correlative terms. I place them here because 
they are generally placed among the associating 
principles, but it is doubtful whether they are not 
so subordinated to Cause and Effect that they 
ought to be identified with them. 

These six principles of association, have been 
divided, and I think properly, into three classes : 
Time and Place, under which the mind works 
immediately and without reflection; Cause and 
Effect, under which everything is done by reflec- 
tion ; ajjd Resemblance and Contrast which are 
intermediate. 

These are the chief principles of association, and 
they seem to me to be original and irreducible ; 
or at least that no reduction of them to any law 
more general can be made that will be of practical 
value. They will remain the separate working 
principles of the mind, and must be studied as 
Buch. Attempts at reduction have been made, and 
the result as given by Hamilton is what he calls 
the law of Redintegration ; this is, that " thoughts 
tend to suggest each other that have previously 
been parts of one whole." That is the law which 
was given, as is said by Hamilton, by St. Augus- 
tine, and which he adopts. That it is a law I 
agree, but I do not think it the law, because I do 
not see that the law of resemblance can be brought 



130 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

under it. That it cannot is shown by President 
Porter, who proposes as the law, " That the mind 
tends to act again more readily in a manner or 
form which is similar to any in which it had acted 
before, in any defined exertion of its energy." But 
taking this statement as it stands, I see in it no 
more reason why, if I pass the place where I met 
a friend yesterday I should think of him then and 
there than at any other time or place. If the ten- 
dency be there independent of circumstances, it 
would be as likely to show itself at one time as 
at another ; but if it depends upon circumstances, 
we are thrown back at once upon the original law, 
having simply that and whatever tendency may 
be implied in our having a representative faculty 
at all. The faculty itself implies the tendency 
under certain conditions. That being given, what 
we need is to know the conditions. It is not, how- 
ever, important whether we reduce these laws to 
one or not. The great, primitive, working ideas, 
are, as I have said, those which I have put down* 
and you will observe that most of them are taken 
from those ideas which were put down in the dia- 
gram as belonging to all men. 

I have now mentioned the primary laws of as- 
sociation. There are also secondary laws which 
have much to do with the order of succession. 
These were especially mentioned by Brown, and 
you will find them dwelt upon at length in his 
lectures. They are chiefly these : 1st. Events 
that are recent, and objects recently seen are more 



SECONDARY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 131 

apt to recur to the mind. 2d. The greater the 
vivacity or emotion with which anything is received 
into the mind, the more likely it is to reappear. 
3d. The longer it is dwelt upon, other things be- 
ing equal. 4th. The more frequently it is brought 
before the mind. Hence the benefit of reviews. 
5th. The state of our bodily powers will have an 
influence. 6th. Which will include some of the 
others, whatever will lead to more fixed and pro- 
tracted attention. These secondary laws will vary 
with every individual ; and hence we see from 
these, as well as from the varying combinations of 
the primary laws, how it happens that such a di- 
versity of thoughts and courses of thought shall 
be struck out in conversation and in writing by 
different men. 

But if thoughts come into the mind through 
some associating principle can that always be 
traced ? Can you always tell how you come to 
think of a thing ? Something comes into your 
mind. You say, " How did I come to think of 
that?" And you cannot tell. Concerning this 
philosophers have had two theories. One is that 
something comes into the mind and introduces 
something else, but disappears so instantaneously 
that all trace of it is lost. The other is that there 
is going on in the mind an operation which is 
below consciousness, but which still affects the in- 
voluntary current. This is Hamilton's view. I 
can only say that if it be correct it is an aban* 



132 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

donment of the principle that the current is reg- 
ulated by the laws of association, or by any laws 
that we can understand or control. I hold to the 
first supposition. 

Of the representative faculty thus marshaling 
its hosts under the laws of association, the prod- 
ucts appear in three forms ; and to these as was 
proposed, we now pass. 

The first and lowest of these is what is called 
Fantasy. Of this I have already spoken. There is 
in it simply a succession of images that have been 
before in the mind, with no intervention of will, 
or recognition of time or place. It takes place, 
as I have said, in reverie, in dreams, and in in- 
sanity. You have seen Niagara. It rises before 
you as a picture. You view it simply as such, 
and it passes and gives place to another. This is 
one form. 

A second form is Memory. In this there is re- 
production with recognition, and with the element 
of past time. These two distinguish memory from 
fantasy on the one hand, and imagination on the 
other. Memory is spontaneous, or voluntary. Spon- 
taneous memory is the immediate suggestion, with- 
out the intervention of will, of our past knowledge 
when the occasion demands it. It may come by 
one principle of association or by another, but it 
comes unsought. Sometimes it seems as if the 
mind has the power to grasp what it needs by 
the mere suggestion of want. But however this 



VOLUNTARY MEMORY 133 

may be, in proportion as that which has before 
been in the mind is presented thus spontaneously, 
we are said to have a ready memory. The spon- 
taneous and ready memory go together. 

Then there is voluntary memory, or as it is also 
called, Recollection. We say, " I do not recollect, 
that is re-collect, or gather again. And that is 
done through the will. This power of re-collec- 
tion differs according to the associating principles 
by which the mind has been accustomed to collect 
and arrange its knowledge. Are time and place 
the associating principles ? They will determine 
the order in which the past shall come up ; and, 
if there be a want of cultivation and judgment, 
the story that is told will have in it all the cir- 
cumstances of time and place whether they are 
related to its point or not. It is by loosely con- 
necting in this way, and uttering whatever the 
lighter associating principles may happen to bring 
up, that story-tellers become tedious, and talkers 
become endless. It is in this way also that men 
with this form of memory strongly developed have 
created the impression that great memory and 
Bound judgment do not go together; they do go 
together, but men of sound judgment never dis- 
play their memory in a way to show that they lack 
judgment. What is to be observed here, however, 
is, that if events, or knowledge of any kind, asso- 
ciated by time and place, do not come at once and 
of themselves, they can seldom be re-collected. 



134 AN OUTLINE STUDY 01 MAN. 

The will has little power over them ; whereas, U 
the knowledge has been associated and arranged 
under the principles of Resemblance, and Cause 
and Effect, and Means and End, it can be re-col- 
lected more certainly. Time may be needed, but 
if it has once been thoroughly known and well 
arranged, it will come. Hence persons arranging 
their knowledge thus are said to have a retentive, 
but not a ready memory. 

These are the kinds of memory so far as they 
depend upon the principles of association. Facts 
seem also to show that there are varieties of it, as 
a memory for names, that depend on special or- 
ganization. But of that I cannot speak. 

Now a word on the cultivation of the memory. 
This, with given power, will depend on three 
things. 1st. Attention — habits of fixed atten- 
tion. Nothing can be remembered that is not at- 
tended to, and generally the memory will be in 
proportion, not to the attention we try to give to a 
subject in which we feel no interest, for that is 
often what is called study, but to the attention 
actually given from a genuine interest in the sub- 
ject. Of this I have spoken before. 2d. A 
second condition for cultivating the memory is 
Order. This imposes upon every student who 
would remember well, the necessity not only of 
external order and arrangement, but of studying 
his subject till he sees its relations as whole and 
parts, and brings it into a system. It is generally 



CULTIVATION OF THE MEMORY. 135 

from not carrying studies out till this is done, and 
this is something which each must do for himself, 
that they are not remembered. 3d. A third con- 
dition is repetition. Of the effect of this in ena- 
bling us so to hold fast what we have acquired that 
we can command it at our will there can be no doubt. 
But here a question arises. Will the memory 
ever lose anything ? It is not whether some things 
may pass beyond the power of recall by the will, 
but whether anything can so pass away that no 
circumstance or event can recall it. It would 
be a marvelous thing if the throng and series of 
which I have spoken were to be retained — so mar- 
velous that formerly I did not credit it at all ; but 
there are well attested phenomena which render it 
highly probable. I have a written account by a 
young man who was suddenly brought into danger 
of immediate death, and whose whole life passed 
before him in the course of not more than two or 
three seconds in such a way as to convince him, 
who had been skeptical before, that there were in 
him the preparation for, and elements of, a day of 
judgment, and to lead him to become a religious 
man. Similar phenomena are related by those 
who have passed a certain stage in drowning and 
been recovered. Perhaps a distinction may be 
drawn here. A portion of what has been in the 
mind pertains to character, and a portion does not. 
All that does I believe will be retained, and perhaps 
what does not. I saw in yesterday's paper that a 



136 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

machine had been invented by which, when one 
writes, there is made an invisible copy of every dot 
and mark so that it can be read by the microscope. 
We know too that there may be writing with invis- 
ible ink which only the fire will bring out, and I 
think there can hardly be a doubt, wonderful and 
fearful as it is, that all that pertains to character, at 
least, is so written that it can be made to reappear. 
The materials that have ouce been in the mind ' 
reappear simply as pictures in Fantasy ; in Mem- 
ory we recognize them and place them in the past ; 
but we are also capable of forming them into new 
combinations, and our power of doing this is called 

THE IMAGINATION. 

This is spoken of as Reproductive and Creative. 
But by Reproduction here nothing more can be 
meant than Fantasy, that is, the exact re-presen- 
tation of the pictures, or images, that have been 
before in the mind. As to creation, it seems to be 
agreed that the Imagination can, in strictness, cre- 
ate nothing. Its office is to rearrange and recom- 
bine materials given ; but its work will be wholly 
different as it deals with the parts, or only the ele- 
ments of the materials given. It is one thing for 
the poet to take parts of the different landscapes 
he has seen and combine them into a new one, 
more beautiful, it may be, than any of them ; it is 
quite another for him to go back to the simple ele- 
ments of form and color, and without reference to 



THE IMAGINATION. 187 

the wholes or parts of landscapes seen, to create 
one. To do this is the higher power. The first is 
patch-work. This alone can be called creation. 
The same distinction holds with the dramatist and 
novelist. Their characters may be, and generally 
are, exaggerated or in some way modified speci- 
mens of persons they have seen ; or they may be 
combinations by the mind from the original ele- 
ments of our nature, perhaps true to that nature, 
perhaps not. So too in invention. The mind may 
avail itself of approximate combinations, and to 
this there is no objection ; or, as in the case of 
Whitney's cotton gin, the end being given, it may 
frame an original and wholly new combination for 
its attainment. In these two ways imagination 
works, all material being plastic under its eye, if 
not under the power of which it can avail itself ; 
and it is easy to see that its importance to human 
progress can hardly be over-estimated. 

And not only with general progress is the im- 
agination intimately connected, but also with in- 
dividual happiness. I have known persons with 
imaginations strong and active, that seemed to 
minister chiefly to a suspicious tendency. Out of 
some look or casual expression of a friend, hav- 
ing no reference to them, they would frame theo- 
ries that would make them wretched, and throw 
them off into lines of conduct indicating aliena- 
tion, and for which nobody could account. Noth- 
ing can be more unhappy. Anything but a suspi- 



138 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

cious temper combined with an active imagination, 
for the comfort of the person himself, or of those 
connected with him. On the other hand, the imag- 
ination may minister not only to the embellishment 
of life, but to its cheerfulness and hope. 

But perhaps the greatest power o£ imagination 
over life comes from the creation by it of what are 
called ideals, not of art, but of character and con- 
duct. Ideals are representations of that which is 
perfect, or which we esteem so. They are a set- 
ting before ourselves of lines of conduct such as be- 
long to the higher and better parts of our nature. 
This all can do, and he who does not do it, and 
hold himself to them, is but drift-wood driven 
hither and thither by the circumstances in which 
he may be placed. The man who does it is a 
vessel that is bearing on to its port. He has an 
ideal, an end, a purpose. He is aiming at excel- 
lence. For a single person thus to form the ideal 
of a perfect life and to shape his course steadily 
with reference to it is a great thing. It is a 
greater thing, both for themselves and for society ; 
it is what is now needed in opposition to the loose 
theories that are coming in, for two young persona 
who are united in marriage to form a perfect ideal 
of a double life, and so to hold themselves steady 
against the temptations of selfishness and of passion 
as to reach its complete realization. 

We have now seen what the laws of association 
are, when what has once been in the mind is pre- 



SENSE PERCEPTION. 139 

sented again; and also what forms the materials 
assume, either of themselves, or under the direction 
of the will. 

We next inquire, as was proposed, what there is 
besides the laws of association and our own wills, 
that influences the mental current. 

And here it is to be said, that in addition to the 
laws of association, there is the constant operation 
of the presentative faculty in the form of sense 
perception presenting something new. This was 
intended to have, and must have with all, a great 
influence on the mental current. The succession 
of day and night, the order of the seasons, heat 
and cold, cloud and sunshine, new faces, new fash- 
ions, new scenes, affect all, but some much more 
than others. With some, the material and order 
of the current is determined chiefly from without. 
Cnless excited by that which addresses the senses 
they are vacant and listless, while with others, the 
current is mainly determined from within. And 
then, if we add to the sights and sounds from na- 
ture, its tastes, and odors, and sensitive pleasures, 
and pains, what comes from conversation and from 
books, we shall see how greatly the mental current 
is modified from without. It is to be added, too, 
that as those around us can make suggestions for 
good or evil through the senses which we know to 
be from them, so I see nothing impossible or un- 
philosophical in supposing that there maybe accesa 
to the mind by invisible beings who may originate 



140 AN OUTLINE STUTY OF MAN. 

promptings and suggestions which we may not be 
able to distinguish from the products of our own 
mind. Who can tell ? Many promptings and sug- 
gestions come to us, both waking and sleeping, in 
a way to indicate such an agency ; but the fact of 
such agency philosophy can neither affirm nor deny. 

It only remains to inquire what power the will 
has over the whole mental current, its material, 
and its order. 

And first, the will has no direct power. It seems 
self -evident that we cannot bring a thought, and 
much more a feeling, into the mind, by willing to 
bring it there, because it is impossible to exert 
the will upon what is not in the mind already. 
Thought and feeling are the condition of will. 
But if we have no direct power, what indirect 
power have we ? First, we can arrest any partic- 
ular thing that appears in the current, and hold it, 
and dwell upon it, and thus change the whole cur- 
rent. And not only can we so arrest a particular 
thought as to change the current, but we can hold 
it with a firm grasp until we have examined it in 
all its parts if it be complex, and in all its relations 
to other thoughts and things. In the power to do 
this, men differ greatly ; and he who can do it is 
capable of producing great mental results. It was 
in this power alone that Sir Isaac Newton said his 
genius consisted ; and in studies like his we may 
be sure that without this no genius could have ac- 
complished anything. It is in this indeed, that all 



WILL AM) THE MENTAL CUBBENT 141 

mental labor consists. If we would understand 
anything, all we can do is to hold the subject be- 
fore the mmd till we see it as it is. If we would 
originate or invent anything, all we can do is to hold 
steadily in the mind what we do know on the sub- 
ject, in the hope that laws of association, not directly 
subject to the will, may present some new phase, or 
relation, or combination that will either be what 
we seek, or give us a clew to it. And to do this is 
mental labor ; it is hard work ; it is among the 
things men are most reluctant to do. Whoever can 
do this when he pleases, and especially if he has 
come to do it with pleasure, is said to have a well 
disciplined mind ; and, as mental labor consists in 
this, so does mental dicipline consist in the capacity 
to do this at will. 

But again the will has a wdde control over those 
avenues by which the mental current is affected 
from without. What books we shall read is 
wholly within our own power ; what companions 
we shall have, and what conversation we shall 
hear, is measurably so ; instead of seeking, as 
many do, for scenes and objects and pictures 
which tend to defile the imagination and inflame 
the passions, we can avoid them. In a great de- 
gree the senses may be guarded, and, instead of 
becoming inlets and purveyors of vice, they may 
become ministers to purity, and to our sense of 
beauty in nature and in art. The senses and 
the imagination unguarded are the highway of 
temptation. 



142 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

But our deepest and widest control over the 
mental current comes from the power we have of 
controlling the habits of association. We may 
dwell habitually on the dark side of things, and 
there are those who do that ; we may dwell habit- 
ually on the bright side of things, and there are 
those who do that. Day by day there come up from 
the mysterious fountain opened within us thoughts, 
feelings, suggestions, impulses. We can repress 
one and cherish another. If not by a strong hand, 
then little by little, a little to-day and a little to- 
morrow, we can cherish certain lines of thought 
and of feeling till the whole current shall be 
changed. What is really done in such cases is 
the adoption by the will of some object of pursuit, 
some ruling passion, some supreme end, which 
shall become as the centre to a whirlpool in the 
current, and draw all things to itself. When the 
storm comes the philosopher thinks of his rain- 
gauge or his barometer, the merchant of his ships, 
and the farmer of his crops. It is a special point 
with dramatic writers and novelists to make their 
characters speak and act in accordance with such 
habits of association as their occupation or train- 
ing would naturally originate, and it is a special 
source of pleasure to the reader when they do 
that. It is in this way that men become men of 
one idea. Let the ruling passion become strong, 
and, according to the idea they adopt, they will 
become successful and applauded, as falling in 
with the general sentiment ; or notorious, as out- 



REFLEX POWER. 143 

raging the moral sense of the community ; or ri- 
diculous, as riding a hobby ; or heroic, as breast- 
ing the current, and sacrificing everything for 
principle. 

There is one thing more. It is what I may call 
the reflex power. This is not understood, but is 
still a fact. Suppose, for instance, you wish to 
remember a name. You know it in a sense per 
fectly well, but it does not come to you. You 
make efforts of all sorts, and for a long time, and 
give it up ; but some half hour afterwards, when 
you are thinking of something else, the name 
comes of itself in a moment. But for your effort, 
your concentrated attention, it would not have 
come ; but by what hidden spring, or circle of 
influences, it is there, I do not understand : The 
physicists call it unconscious cerebration. It is 
in this way that many inventions are made, and 
that original thoughts come. Men labor and 
seem to labor in vain, but they are all the while 
becoming more and more acquainted with the sub- 
tler and more remote relations of the subjects, 
and at length the thing reveals itself as in a mo- 
ment — perhaps a bright moment that rewards 
the labors of years. 

On the whole, then, while there is doubtless a 
difference both in force and material in the invol- 
untary current in different minds, and while 
external surroundings and influences will assert 
themselves in a measure, it yet appears that every 
man, not insane, has sufficient means of self-con* 



144 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 



trol. Let parents control children at the right 
point ; let individuals begin at the right point 
with themselves, and avail themselves of the help 
which God offers, and they can control themselves 
with reference to all the ends for which He made 
them. 

In the last Lecture we added nothing to our dia- 
gram, and found nothing to add except conscious- 
ness. In this we have found more, and with the 
additions now made the diagram will stand thus : 

f Ideals. 
Imagination. < Poetry, 

(^ Art, 

Memory, — Spontaneous, Voluntary, — The Past. 

_ C Air Castles. 

Fantasy. j ^ 

^ Dreams, 

Secondary Princd?les: — 

Means. 



H 


H 

D 

m 

o 





Primary Principles 

of 

Association. 



Cause, 

Resemblance. 
Place, 
Time, 
The Representative Faculty — Products. 



Resemblance. 
Number, 
Identity, 
Time, 
Space, 
ta Being, 
The Reason or Regula- 
tive Faculty. 



The Inner 

Sense. 

The Outer 

Sense. 



Willing. 
Feeling, 
Thought, 

Objects. 
Percepts, 



The Presentative 
ulty. 



Fao- 



MlND 



INTELLECT. 
Will. 

Sensibility, 
Intellect, 



LECTURE VIL 

THE ELABORATIVE FACULTY AND ITS PROCESSES. 
— CONCEPTS AND THEIR PROPERTIES. 

We have seen that the mind, once awakened 
and furnished, moves on with an involuntary 
power. This movement the will cannot arrest in 
our waking hours, and we have no reason to sup- 
pose that it is ever arrested in sleep. With such 
a power only, a being in the form of man would 
be a thing — a necessitated, sensitive, spontaneously 
active thing. In this we have that in us which 
is properly nature, and we have seen the relation 
to this of that voluntary personal power that 
stands above it, that comprehends and controls it, 
and which is what we mean when we say "I." 
Through the agency of these two powers acting 
in accordance with the laws of association we have 
the Representative Faculty, giving us mere pic- 
tures, as in Fantasy, or recognized products, as 
in Memory, or modified products, as in Imagi- 
nation. These, with the inflow of new material 
through the senses, all constantly modified by the 
rational intuitions, and brought into unity by 
consciousness, make up the mental current. Over 
this, as we have seen, we have means of efficient 
10 



146 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

control, by attending to borne particular thing ; by 
guarding the avenues of temptation, by a control 
of the habits of association, and by reflex power. 

But besides the power of thus representing 
what it has received, the mind has the power of 
performing with the materials thus received other 
operations of an entirely different character. It 
can Compare, Abstract, Generalize, Judge, Reason, 
and Systematize, and in doing these it is said to 
bring into exercise what is called the 

ELABORATIVE FACULTY. 

It is by this faculty that those operations which 
are now called thought are performed. Formerly 
all the operations of the intellect were called 
thought, but more recently the term thought has 
been limited to the processes just mentioned. 

The faculty is called Elaborative, and it will be 
observed that its processes hold the same relation to 
the materials brought into the mind that the pro- 
cesses of building and repairing hold to the mate- 
rials which are brought into the body. The build- 
ing and repairing systems take hold of that which 
is brought into the system and elaborate it ; they 
transform it, and make of it another thing. The 
elaborative system does the same thing in the 
mind. It takes the material given by the presen- 
tative faculty and performs the operations I have 
mentioned, and those are the operations we are 
how to consider. These operations have, as I 
showed that the various functions of the body 



THE ELABORATIVE FACULTY. 147 

have, a regular gradation. In order to abstract, it 
is necessary to compare ; in order to generalize, it 
is necessary to compare and abstract ; in order to 
judge, in the ordinary sense of that word, it is 
necessary to compare, abstract, and generalize ; 
in order to reason, it is necessary to compare, ab- 
stract, generalize, and judge ; and in order to sys- 
tematize, it is necessary to compare, abstract, gen- 
eralize, judge, and reason. There is here, pre- 
cisely as in the body, a regular gradation and 
order of functions as conditioning and conditioned. 
The processes here spoken of as belonging to 
the Elaborative Faculty are the same as those as- 
signed to the Understanding by those who divide 
the Intellect into the Understanding and the Rea- 
son. As elaborating materials already- given, and 
as subject to the will, these processes are in entire 
contrast to those assigned to the Reason. These 
we now proceed to consider separately. And first 
of 

COMPARISON. 

This some would not place first, but I do it be- 
cause there is an elementary comparison and con- 
trast of ourselves with other things in our first acts 
of thought, and that is involved in all our thinking. 
This is little noticed, but with what is commonly 
called comparison we are all familiar. Here are 
two men presented by the senses. One is tall, well 
proportioned, with a light complexion and sandy 
hair ; the other is short, with rickety shoulder's, a 
dark complexion and dark hair. In these ajid 



148 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

other respects they differ, but there are others in 
which they agree. They have common senses ; 
each has two hands and two feet ; each has a chin ; 
they both use language to express thought, and 
both have a moral nature. In comparing them or 
any two objects, we observe both the points of 
resemblance and those of difference, and, as we 
notice one or the other, we form habits of mind 
practically different. 

There are men, who, in looking at different 
objects, habitually and chiefly observe the points 
of resemblance. These tend to classify and ar- 
range all things, and bring thejn into unity. 
They are constructive and run into science, for 
there is no science except as there is resemblance, 
and as there are classification and arrangement 
based on that. Other men observe differences, 
and so become practical rather than scientific men. 
In dealing with different substances or different 
men we need to know, not so much what they 
have in common, as their specific characteristics 
and differences. Take the physician. There are 
physicians who are scientific ; they know the gen- 
eral facts and laws of their profession, and can 
give a good lecture on any point pertaining to it. 
But take them to the bedside, and they fail from 
not discriminating differences. This is typhus 
fever, and that is typhus fever. The resemblances 
they see, but the difference between typhus fever 
and typhus fever they do not see, and so, in treat- 
ing each case alike, they kill their patients scien* 



t 

ABSTRACTION. — GENERALIZATION. 149 

fcifically, or at least fail to cure them. These are 
the men of routine. There are others, who, while 
using the common name, observe every difference 
of age, of temperament, of habit, and who are 
thus able to adapt their treatment to each par- 
ticular case. And so it is throughout. Scientific 
classification depends on the observation of resem- 
blances, and practical skill on the observation of 
differences. So much for comparison — the obser- 
vation of resemblances and differences. We next 
pass to 

ABSTRACTION. 
By this we mean simply the consideration of one 
of the qualities of an object without reference to 
the rest ; as, for instance, the redness of this desk. 
You can consider that with no reference to the 
other qualities of the desk, and when you do that 
you abstract. This supposes a difference between 
Bubstances and attributes. In abstraction we con- 
sider attributes by themselves. To do this is nec- 
essary in order to the next process mentioned, 
which is 

GENERALIZATION. 

We can abstract without generalizing, but we 
cannot generalize without abstracting. Between 
the two men already referred to, there are such 
points of resemblance that many assertions may be 
made that will be true of both of them ; and that 
we may make such assertions conveniently, we need 
a common name. Generalization is the giving of 



150 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

a common name to individuals and objects that re- 
Bemble each other, on the ground of that resem- 
blance. This implies that we abstract the points 
of resemblance, and consider them, without refer- 
ence to the points of difference. To do this ia 
natural, and is necessary to make language a con- 
venient instrument for communicating thought. 
If we may call that a contrivance which is instinc- 
tive, we may say that there is no labor-saving con- 
trivance like it. The single assertion, " Man is 
mortal," is equivalent to as many separate asser- 
tions as there are men on the earth. And so of 
other things. On the ground of their resemblance 
we are able to affirm of them all by a single asser- 
tion what is true of each. And this gives us in- 
directly a good rule for generalization. It is that 
we may apply a common name only on the ground 
of such resemblance that what we affirm of all 
shall be true of each. That this rule should al- 
ways be observed is not possible, but the delusions 
and prejudices into which men fall from not ob- 
serving it are endless. When it cannot be observed, 
and a common name is given on such a ground, for 
instance as nationality, we are to be careful to affirm 
of individuals only what is necessarily implied in 
the name, and not what we may have accidentally 
associated with it. 

We now see how we get the general term, and 
what the use of it is. We next inquire what that 
is in the mind that corresponds to such a term. 



MEANING OF THE TEKM, ,( MAN. n 151 

When I speak of an individual man, I know 
what is in my mind. I know there is an actually 
existing being who corresponds to the name he may 
happen to have ; but when I take the term " man," 
what is it in my mind that corresponds to that ? 
la there anything out of my mind, and existing in 
nature, that corresponds to it ? No. What does 
the term, " man," mean then ? The question here 
involved has long divided philosophers, and there 
have been three theories about it. The first is 
that of 

REALISM. 

According to this, when a general term is made 
use of, at least in some cases, there is something 
out of the mind that corresponds to it, a real thing. 
The term man, for instance, means not only what 
all men have in common, but something which ex- 
ists apart from any individual man, and by partak- 
ing of which each individual becomes a man. 

The second theory is that of 

NOMINALISM. 

According to this, there is not only nothing in 
nature that corresponds to the word "man," but 
there is nothing in the mind except the word, the 
name. 

The third theory is that of 

CONCEPTUAUSM. 

There are those who say that in apprehending 



152 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

those points of resemblance on which the word is 
based, there is a mental product distinct from the 
word, which may be called a conception, or con- 
cept. This I suppose to be correct. But whether 
it be so or not, a concept is that which corresponds 
to a general term, and you see how it is reached. 

Of concepts, as thus formed, the properties and 
uses are so many and so important, that they need 
to be well understood. And first, they have what 
are called comprehension and extension. What 
these are will be best explained by a series. 

Being. 

Organized Being. 

Animal. 

Vertebrate. 

Mammal. 

Man. 

Cato. 

In this series, there are two wholes which are 
inversely as each other. Taking the individual, 
Cato, you will see that he has in him a greater 
number of qualities than man has. He has all 
the qualities needed to make him a man, and in 
addition, those specific qualities which make him 
Cato. Man, again, has more qualities than Mam- 
mal. He has all that belongs to Mammal, with 
those needed to make him man. And so on, all 
the way up, till we reach Being, which is said to 
be the most general of all, but has no attribute ex- 
cept itself. Here then we have, in an individual 
man, a greater number of qualities., and so greater 



COMPREHENSION AND EXTENSION. 



153 



comprehension, than in any member of the series 
above him ; and the qualities go on diminishing 
till we reach the top. In the individual, at the 
bottom, the number is the greatest possible ; in 
Being, at the top, the number is the smallest pos- 
sible. We thus see what a whole of comprehen 
eion is, and how one is greater than another. 

Beginning now at the top, we shall see that Be- 
ing can be affirmed of more objects than organ- 
ized being ; that organized being includes under 
it more objects than Animal ; Animal more than 
Vertebrate, and so on till we come to Cato, where 
we have the least number possible. This gives 
us extension, and it will be seen at once that the 
whole of extension can become less, only as the 
whole of comprehension becomes greater, 

In our first Lecture we had a pyramid in which 
the steps of the creation were represented, the 
numbers diminishing as qualities were added till 
we reached man. We may also have here a pyx- 




154 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 



amid representing the progress of thought as it 
passes from the more to the less general. Thus, 
this pyramid shows us a whole of extension, and 
how it diminishes till it reaches a point in Cato. 
A similar pyramid with its members inverted will 
give us a whole of comprehension diminishing tiU 
it reaches a point in Being. Thus 




These two pyramids will enable you to under- 
stand easily the two wholes that are contained in 
the concept, and how it is that they must be in- 
versely as each other. A clear understanding of 
this is the key to most of the processes of thought 
and of Logic. 

But before showing how this is, let me ask your 
attention to the peculiarities of the lowest, and of 
the highest members of the series above given. 
And first of Cato. This is the name of an indi- 
vidual, and, according to the definition that has 
been given, cannot be a Goncept, since a concept 






BEING. 155 

is formed by a comparison of different individuals, 
What right, then, has it to be among concepts ? 
[t would have no right there if it were not itself 
a concept. This it is, but differently formed from 
those already considered. Etymologically a con> 
cept is a gathering together. As heretofore con- 
sidered, it is a gathering together of individuals 
under a common name on the ground of a common 
attribute or attributes. Here it is a gathering to- 
gether of attributes in an individual or object, and 
so it is, as I explained in the fourth lecture, an 
individual concept, in distinction from a general 
concept that is formed by generalization. It is 
the concept of qualities, as that is of objects ; of 
comprehension, as that is of extension. In. the 
books generally it is called a percept, but a per- 
cept is the product of a single sense. This gives 
harmony to the whole procedure. It places at the 
foot of the column, and as the condition of gen- 
eralization, an individual person or object whose 
distinguishing and common qualities must have 
been found by observation, so that observation 
must be the basis of any generalization that can 
avail anything, 

So much for the lowest term of the series. Now 
for the highest, that is, Being. This is commonly, 
and I believe universally regarded by logicians as 
the result of generalization, and as giving us the 
summum genus, or most comprehensive class. But 
is this so ? It is conceded that the idea of Being 



156 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

is given us by intuition at the very beginning of 
our mental operations. Is the idea of it here dif- 
ferent from that we had when we began? Do 
we get something new, or do we complete the 
circle, excluding everything except Being, with 
which we began? I think the latter. We had 
with us the idea of being when we began with 
Cato, and it simply remains as applicable to all 
things when everything else is excluded. It is not, 
like the others, an attribute known by observa- 
tion to belong to an individual or to a class. We 
know by observation the attributes that belong to 
Cato, and man, and mammals ; but it is not so 
with Being. That is a necessary idea accompany- 
ing the whole process, and is at length left alone 
as the one thing that must be thought in connec- 
tion with every particular being and thing. In 
this view of it, Being is not a concept at all, either 
individual or general. 

Knowing thus how our column is composed, we 
shall readily understand those two great opera- 
tions in thinking, definition and division. Who 
ever can define and divide accurately will have 
power as a thinker. A logical definition always 
consists of the genus, that is, of the class above, 
and the specific difference. Thus, Cato is a man, 
with the specific differences that make him Cato. 
A man is a mammal, with the specific differences 
that make him man. A mammal is an animal, 
with the specific differences that make it a mam- 



DISTINCTNESS OF THINKING. 157 

mal, and so on till we come to Being which can* 
riot be defined, because, as is commonly said, there 
is no higher genus above it. And technically, 
this is the reason, but the real reason I suppose 
to be that Being is a simple idea, and simple ideas 
being known immediately, can only be recognized, 
but not defined. 

In division we begin at the top and reverse the 
process by which we went up in definition. Be- 
ing cannot be divided, but as indicating a group it 
may be regarded as a concept, and the things that 
have being may be. Of these, therefore, we make 
a division into Substance as either spiritual or ma- 
terial ; then of Material Substance into organized 
and unorganized; then of organized matter into 
animals and plants ; then of animals into their great 
classes, and so on, constantly diminishing numbers 
and adding qualities, till we reach Cato who has 
the greatest possible number of qualities, but who 
cannot be divided and remain Cato, or a man. Re- 
maining a man, the individual is incapable of a 
logical division. 

And now, in connection with the two processes 
just given, we may see what it is to think clearly, 
and what to think distinctly, and the difference be- 
tween these. 

We think clearly when we discriminate a given 
concept, as man, from all others. This it is often 
not easy to do. To this day men are not agreed 
as to the differences between man and animals ; 



158 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

but whoever shall be able to include in the term 
man all that is so distinctive of him as to constitute 
him a man, and nothing else, will think clearly 
respecting man. This clearness is said to be ob- 
tained by definition, but it seems rather to be true 
that we get at the definition through that clearness 
which we gain by investigation. 

By distinctness, on the other hand, we mean a 
knowledge of all the divisions, and parts, and 
qualities, contained within a given concept. We 
may separate man clearly from other beings, and 
yet not have a distinct knowledge of him as he is 
divided into different races, or as he is made up 
of those different systems which we are now study- 
ing. And distinct thinking will respect not merely 
the general, but also the individual concept. We 
think distinctly of an individual only when we 
have an exact knowledge of those traits by which 
he is distinguished from all others. 

This distinctness of thinking we reach by divis- 
ion, or rather, again, by distinct thinking we are 
able to make divisions that are exhaustive. This 
is even more difficult than clear thinking. It is a 
great thing to be able to think clearly and distinctly 
on any subject, and no man can do it on many. It 
is a great thing, and what few men attain to, to be 
able to handle adequately general terms. Take, 
for instance, such a word as civilization, and who 
can fix precisely its elements and limits ? Take 
such a word as virtue. To the child and untrained 



ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 159 

man it presents a mere blur, and who is there that 
thinks with entire clearness and distinctness when 
it is used ? And so it comes to pas3 that there is a 
great deal of speech in which such terms are used, 
which conveys but a very indistinct impression to 
those who hear it. And so too we may see how it is, 
as Campbell says in his " Philosophy of Rhetoric," 
that men may speak and write nonsense without 
knowing it. The words are familiar, they are cor- 
rectly arranged, they have connected with them, 
it may be, pleasing and stimulating associations, 
but when you come to analyze them they mean 
nothing at all. I remember inquiring of an author 
who sent me his work for criticism, what a particu- 
lar passage meant. He replied that he thought it 
meant something when he wrote it, but was satis- 
fied it did not. Of this there is not a little, espe- 
cially in writing supposed to be " deep." 

The two wholes in the column presented, related 
as they are inversely to each other, have given rise 
to no little difficulty among philosophers in regard 
to the processes of analysis and synthesis. Some 
philosophers have called it an analysis to begin at 
the bottom and throw off properties, and a synthe- 
sis to begin at the same place and add objects, 
while others have called it an analysis to begin at 
the top and throw off objects, and a synthesis to 
add properties, and so, dealing with the same 
elements, they have been at cross purposes and have 
seemed to contradict each other. Both were right 



160 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

but they began with different wholes, and did not 
think clearly. 

We have now found all the substantive materials 
which the mind forms and with which it works ex- 
cept one. We speak of the individual, of man, 
and of humanity. Humanity is what is called an 
abstract term. In forming it we abstract what 
belongs to man universally, and then, having con- 
densed it into a word, we deal with it as if it were 
a separate thing. It is not a separate thing. It 
has no real existence, but it is convenient for us to 
regard it thus, and to make use, in this way, of ab- 
stract terms. 

We have, then, as the substantive product of 
our mental action up to this point, and as the mate- 
rials for our future work : First. The primitive 
necessary ideas of Reason. Second. Percepts. 
Third. Individual or comprehensive concepts. 
Fourth. General concepts. Fifth. Abstract terms. 
These are the materials with which we are con- 
stantly dealing, and these are all. Of these, each 
is differently formed. Each has its own laws and 
is subject to its own processes ; and it will be an 
era in mental science when these shall be clearly 
discriminated, and there shall be no attempt to 
employ the processes which belong only to one in 
dealing with the others. 

No one can know the past without seeing that 
much labor has been spent in manipulating the 
general concept which could have no possible bene- 



DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN IDEAS. 161 

fit till more had been given to the investigation of 
individual objects, and so to the enriching of indi- 
vidual concepts. The general is dependent upon 
the individual concept for its whole value, and 
men might as well be employed in blowing soap- 
bubbles as in ringing changes upon general terms, 
quite as empty, except as they are freighted with 
meaning from individual concepts. It has been 
a serious mistake to suppose that labor in one of 
these departments could be a substitute for it in 
the other. 

I cannot help thinking also that there has been, 
and is, a want of discrimination between the neces- 
sary ideas of Reason given us at first on the left- 
side of the line on our diagram, and those found by 
generalization. These are wholly different in their 
origin and characteristics, and should be named 
and treated differently. In the one we have a com- 
plex product given by observation, the comparison 
of different objects by abstraction and generali- 
zation. There is about these ideas no necessity 
either of the ideas themselves, or in the processes 
by which they are formed. In the other the product 
is simple, it comes without any process of abstrac- 
tion or generalization. It is not the product of 
any process of thinking, but its condition ; and not 
only are the ideas themselves necessary, but all pro- 
cesses and movements of the mind, so far as these 
are elements in them, are necessary also. Looking 
then at the process by which, as we have seen, con 
u 



162 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

cepts are formed, I ask you by what process that 
shall conduce to clearness of thought and of expres- 
sion we can make concepts of these ideas and thus 
bring them under the same class with those formed 
by generalization. And yet this is constantly done, 
and by our most eminent writers. And not only 
bo, but the processes, as of induction, that have 
properly for their material only the products of 
observation and generalization, are nominally trans- 
ferred to these ideas as if they were the same. I 
venture to question whether these ideas can ever 
become what may properly be called concepts, or 
can be the material for any process that can prop- 
erly be called induction. In these studies nothing 
can be more confusing than the transference of 
the same name to things and processes that are 
radically, or essentially different. 

But however this may be, we have now those 
mental products which are to be employed as 
elements and materials in the remaining elabora- 
tive processes, as those processes are generally un- 
derstood. Involving, as they must, the ideas of 
Reason, Judgment and Reasoning are supposed to 
have for their material, and to deal directly with 
the percept, the individual concept, the general 
concept, and with abstract terms. We proceed then 
to the next of the elaborative processes mentioned. 



judgment: keasoning. 163 

tele judgment. 

In one view of it, Judgment is elementary. I 
do not well see how we can think without judging, 
And that is the doctrine of the philosophers gen- 
erally. They say that a judgment is involved in 
all our thinking. But as it is used in logic, and 
used generally, the term does not go back in that 
way. As thus used, it is subsequent to a compari- 
son either of objects or concepts, and consists in an 
affirmation that they agree or disagree. Iron is a 
metal ; we know what iron is, and we know what 
metal is, and we affirm that they agree ; or that 
one of these comes under the other. That is a 
judgment. A judgment is necessarily expressed 
in a proposition ; and this will be either affirma- 
tive or negative. The proposition again must con- 
tain either expressly or impliedly two terms, indi- 
cating the notions compared, and a copula, which 
will always be some form of the verb to be. This 
is true of judgment in general. Of its different 
forms, as Categorical, Hypothetical, and Disjunc- 
tive, it is not necessary to speak. 

For judgment, as we have now considered it, the 
previous Elaborative processes were a condition ; 
and Judgment, together with those processes, is a 
condition for the next of those processes, that is, — 

REASONING. 

By Reasoning we gain mediate knowledge. In 



164 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

intuition we have immediate knowledge, but in 
reasoning we get a knowledge of one thing by 
means of other things. The process of the mind 
in this is said to be discursive instead of intuitive. 
Its object is to show that a proposition that is not 
self-evident is either true or false. Ability to do 
this indicates mental power, but the need of doing 
it is from a limitation of power. A mind with 
power enough to see all things directly and intui- 
tively would not reason. And not only do we 
reason when we prove, or disprove propositions, 
but also when we assign causes, or give reasons, or 
explain anything. Here is a rainbow. You wish 
to know how it came, and you discover the laws of 
light, and its operations in connection with the 
rain drops, so that you are able to give the reason 
or cause of its being there ; and that is Reasoning. 
It is a passage from a thing to its cause by means 
of other things, in the same way as we pass from 
one truth to another by means of one or more in- 
termediate propositions. 

Of Reasoning there are several forms, and, in my 
judgment, more than one process. Whately in- 
sists strenuously that there is but one. He says : 
" In every instance in which we reason in the 
strict sense of the word . . .a certain process takes 
place in the mind which is one and the same in all 
cases, provided it be rightly conducted." But of 
that we can judge better after considering the 



INDUCTION. 165 

different forms which reasoning assumes. And 
first of 

INDUCTION. 

In this we establish general facts, or laws, or 
truths, from particular instances. We begin with 
the individual, we compare individual with indi- 
vidual, and go on till we feel authorized to affirm 
a general truth. 

This assumes two forms. There is first what is 
called, by the logicians, Formal Induction, in which 
the conclusion is drawn, or is said to be, from an 
enumeration of each case. This is all the Induction 
that Sir William Hamilton allows of in logic, be- 
cause he allows of nothing as belonging to logic, 
unless the conclusion is necessitated by the laws 
of thought. But it may be questioned whether in- 
duction by simple enumeration is reasoning at all. 
Suppose I enumerate the sixteen wards of Boston, 
and affirm of each that it has a steam-fire engine, 
and then say, therefore every ward of Boston has 
a steam- fire engine, would that be reasoning or 
would it be an assertion of the same thing in a 
different form ? I think the latter. But however 
that may be, this is not what people generally un- 
derstand by Induction. They understand by it 
the bringing in of numerous individual instances 
by observation, and then concluding from them 
over to a general truth. The observation is pre- 
paratory to the induction, but no part of it. That 



166 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN, 

consists in so reasoning from observed instances to 
those not observed as to constitute a class, or to find 
a general law. 

In any particular instance of induction, the in- 
quiry is whether we are authorized to extend, in 
that instance, uniformity of causation, of construc- 
tion, of succession, of appearance even as in color, 
from the instances which we have observed to oth- 
ers not observed in such a way as to make of them 
one class, as to affirm of them the same general 
truths, and to make of those general truths prem- 
ises for deductive reasoning. All the ground we 
can have for this is Analogy, or a likeness in some 
respects between the phenomena. That likeness 
in some respects leads us to inf er likeness in others 
is a fact, and a fundamental fact in the reasonings 
of life. It is the basis of probable reasoning. " It 
is not my design," says Bishop Butler, "to in- 
quire farther into the nature, the foundation,, and 
measure of probability ; or whence it proceeds that 
likeness should beget that presumption, opinion, 
and full conviction, which the human mind is 
formed to receive from it, and which it does neces- 
sarily produce in every one." So when Franklin 
had observed certain similarities between terrestrial 
electricity and lightning, he suspected they might 
be the same ; but in inquiring whether he had a 
right to put them in the same class, the question 
was not about the uniformity of nature in general, 
and in other departments, but whether the ob- 



INDUCTION. 167 

served similarities were sufficient to justify him in 
inferring that they were altogether similar, or at 
least so far as to be attributable to the same cause. 

But while likeness alone raises this expectation, 
other things may come in. Seeing an animal with 
horns, that was also cloven-footed, some slight ex- 
pectation might be raised that the next kind of 
animal with horns would also be cloven-footed ; but 
a3 no reason of congruity or utility can be assigned 
for this, it would require many instances to justify 
as in saying, as we now do, that all horned animals 
are cloven-footed. But, observing one kind of ani- 
mal, as the sheep, destitute of upper cutting teeth 
and also chewing the cud ; we should much more 
readily affirm the chewing of the cud of all other am- 
mals destitute of upper cutting teeth because there 
is an evident congruity and utility in it. While, 
therefore, likeness in certain respects is indispen- 
sable as the ground of any Induction ; yet othei 
things come in to determine the degree of likeness 
or the number of instances required, and of these 
uo exact statement can be made. 

It would appear, therefore, that an act of Induc- 
tion may respect causes, as of the movements of the 
heavenly bodies ; or structures, as of horned ani- 
mals that are also cloven-footed ; or successions, as 
of the seasons ; or mere color, as when we infer 
that all crows are black. In each case we inquire, 
not, as is commonly said, whether we may infer 
from a part to the whole, which would be a begging 



168 AN OUTLINE STUDY OP MAN. 

of the question, but whether we may regard as a 
whole, that is, put into one class, beings and phe- 
nomena which had been regarded as separate. 
With phenomena thus different, and with resem- 
blances of every shade, we might expect that the 
human mind would find here, instead of a logical 
treadmill, constant calls for all its natural and ac- 
quired sagacity. 

Such being the process of Induction, it remains 
to inquire for its underlying axiom. There is 
none except the uniformity of causation. By this 
we mean that the same causes operating under the 
same circumstances, will produce the same effects. 
Instead of this, modern science assumes as the 
axiom of Induction that " Nature is uniform.' 
And here we see the source of much of the false 
logic of science. It assumes, wholly without 
% proof, and against it, that nature and its laws are 
uniform and independent. This is the one postu- 
late of mere scientists on which their whole struc- 
ture rests. But so far is the general proposition that 
nature is uniform from being at the basis of our 
Induction that it is itself the result of Induction. 
There is doubtless in man, as in animals, an in- 
stinctive adjustment of his nature to his surround- 
ings as uniform. But this is not Induction, nor 
its basis. As intelligent and scientific, man has 
reached particular uniformities, as of the seasons, 
of tides, of comets, only after such induction as 
each case seemed to demand. This he has done, 



AXIOM OF INDUCTION. 169 

not on the ground of uniformity of nature, for the 
question in each particular case was whether nature 
would be uniform in that case, but solely on the 
ground of the uniformity of causation. That nature 
is uniform in her different departments and through- 
out her domain is by no means an instinctive belief 
It was long before the laws that prevail on the earth 
were supposed to extend to the heavens ; and it 
was a surprise to find that the sun and fixed stars 
are composed of the same materials as our earth. 
If it were an axiom that " nature is uniform," 
then nature could not be broken up without fal- 
sifying a fundamental law of belief. But if we 
assume that the only axiom applicable in Induc- 
tion is uniformity of causation, the other uniform- 
ities following from that, two things will follow. 

One is that we cannot put Induction into a syl- 
logism. The fact that causes will continue in the 
future to operate as they do now, or that they will 
continue to operate at all, is not contained in the 
fact that they are operating now, in the same way 
that the conclusion of a syllogism is contained in 
the premises. It is not contained in it at all. 
One assertion is not a generaJL truth under which 
the other comes, and no ingenuity can make it so. 
The conclusion, therefore, or inference, can be only 
probable. No axiomatic major premiss can give 
to it one particle of its own evidence, and nothing 
can be gained by any attempt to make it do that. 

The second thing that will follow is that the 



170 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

order of nature may be changed or broken up 
without interfering with any law of thought or 
of human belief. That this may be, the whole 
history of belief shows. We do indeed naturally 
expect that causes now operating will continue to 
operate ; that structures similar to those now grow- 
ing up will continue to grow, that events occur- 
ring regularly now will continue to occur ; but if 
this were not to be so it would contradict no law 
of thought; it would be opposed to no funda- 
mental axiom. We have but to suppose that 
back of all bases of Induction, back of uniformities 
and laws of nature, there is a Personal Cause, and 
all difficulty about miracles, or about any such fu- 
ture catastrophe as the Bible reveals, is removed 
at once. 

Induction presupposes a ground of uniformity 
which presents itself to us as impersonal. This 
ground may indeed be maintained, and so, over- 
ruled and suspended, by a personal being ; but as 
a ground of induction the personal element is not 
recognized. Hence the moment we begin to rea- 
son about final causes, or ends, and nature re- 
garded as the work of a personal being, we pass 
from the region of nature to that of personality, 
and the question whether we have a right thus to 
pass cannot be decided by Induction. We reason 
respecting the conduct of personal beings, on the 
ground that they will be consistent with them- 
selves ; and we reason respecting the processes and 



INDUCTION — GROUND IMPERSONAL. 171 

laws of nature, on the ground that they will be 
consistent with themselves ; but it is only the last 
that we call Induction. The first has no distinct- 
ive name, probably because it cannot become a 
science. The underlying principles are not the 
same, and we should be careful not to confound 
them as has too often been done. 



LECTURE VIII. 

REASONING. — ANALOGY AND EXPERIENCE. — 
DEMONSTRATION AND PROBABLE REASONING. 
— INFERRING AND PROVING. — SYSTEMIZA- 
TION. 

The Elaborative Faculty takes the crude mate- 
rials furnished by the Presentative Faculty and 
modifies them. The operations it performs in 
doing this, are Comparison, Abstraction, General- 
ization, Judgment, Reasoning, and Systemization. 
These processes were shown to follow the law of 
the conditioning and the conditioned, and to be 
analogous to those by which food is elaborated for 
the body. These we have considered as far up as 
to Reasoning, and spoke particularly of Induction. 

For Induction we found the sole field to be the 
phenomena furnished by observation ; we found 
that a conclusion respecting these, whether in 
their succession or construction, could gain noth- 
ing from any syllogistic arrangement of terms, 
and that the only law of belief on which any con- 
clusion can rest back is that of the uniformity of 
causation. If it can be shown in regard to any- 
thing that the same causes will continue to oper- 



ANALOGY AND EXPERIENCK 173 

ate under the same circumstances we may be sure 
of uniformity. If not, nothing reached by Induc- 
tion that we may call a law has any claim to be 
regarded either as absolutely uniform or as per- 
manent. No law of belief would be violated if it 
were to be interrupted or broken up at any time. 
The mouse lemains in his underground nest for 
three months, and " all things continue as they 
were," but the fourth month the plowman comes, 
and he must seek a new nest. The question of 
an interruption is one of evidence like any other, 
and can be decided only by a knowledge of all the 
causes that may come in. 

After Induction, Deduction is usually spoken of. 
Indeed, Deduction is often considered first, and 
there are reasons for that ; but as Induction is sup- 
posed by some to be always, and is many times, 
the condition of Deduction, it comes first here. 
Then comes, not Deduction, but, as based on the 
same ground as Induction, reasoning from 

ANALOGY AND EXPERIENCE. 

This, as well as Induction, is what the logicians 
call modified logic. It can never give certainty. 

In Analogy we reason from individual to indi- 
vidual on the ground of observed similarity in 
certain points. From similarity in points which 
we are able to observe, we infer similarity in 
others which we either cannot, or do not, observe. 
In Induction we reason from several individuals and 



174 AN OUTLINE STUDY OP MAN. 

form a class, or infer a law ; in Analogy we reason 
from one or more individuals to an individual, and 
infer resemblance in unobserved qualities or par- 
ticulars. You have seen a man with red hair, and 
he was passionate. You see another man with 
red hair, and infer that he is passionate. A miner 
finds a mine in connection with certain forma- 
tions or appearances of the earth above it. Find- 
ing those appearances again, he reasons from An- 
alogy and expects to find another mine. The case 
commonly put is that of reasoning from the earth 
to the moon. We observe several similarities 
between the two, and then if we think they will 
authorize it, we conclude that the mocm is inhab- 
ited. Or, we observe the differences, and infer 
that the moon is not inhabited. Here we have 
the same underlying ground as in Induction. It 
is likeness, giving, as Bishop Butler says, proba- 
bility — that and nothing more. Hence, though 
it is a constant ground of inference in life, and a 
constant means of advancing knowledge, some will 
not admit it as belonging to logic. 

But I spoke of Experience as well as Analogy. 
Experience is supposed to be a certain, and Anal- 
ogy an uncertain, ground of inference. How do 
they differ ? We have strict experience only of 
what has been, and now is. These we may know 
certainly by experience, and these only. We say 
we know by experience that fire will burn. Not 
strictly. We know by experience that fire has 



EXPERIENCE AND ANALOGY. 175 

burned ; we infer from experience that it will 
burn ; but in strict experience the certainty of 
the past so passes over into the future that we say 
we know both. We reason from Experience, as 
from Analogy, in regard to objects that coexist 
in space, and events that succeed each other in 
time; and we reason from strict experience only 
on the supposition that the objects and causative 
agencies continue to be either the same or pre- 
cisely similar in that point, or in those points on 
which the argument turns. We then feel the 
same certainty of our conclusion that we do in 
the continuance of the laws of nature ; but if there 
be any departure from identity or exact similarity 
in the circumstances, the certainty will be propor- 
tionately diminished. Our reasoning will be from 
Analogy, and not from Experience. 

We have thus the exact difference between Ex- 
perience and Analogy so far as Analogy is a ground 
of argument. All analogy implies resemblance, but 
resemblance may be either between things or their 
relations. It is only a resemblance between things 
that can be a basis of argument ; a resemblance 
between relations is the basis of figures of speech. 
There is no resemblance between the foot of a man 
and the foot of a mountain or between the head 
of a man and the head of a nail, or of a river, or 
of a government, therefore we cannot reason from 
one to the other, but there is a resemblance of 
relations, and so there is a foundation for a figure 



176 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

of speech. There is no resemblance between light 
and truth, but truth is to the intellect what light 
is to the eye, and from this resemblance of rela- 
tions they are said to be analogous to each other. 
It is true that resemblance in relations generally 
implies some resemblance in things, but we are to 
be careful not to confound these two grounds of 
Analogy, and so mistake for Reasoning, mere fig- 
ures of speech. 

But if the account now given of the difference 
between Analogy and Experience be correct we 
shall see that the cases are relatively few in which 
we reason from strict experience, and that, in most 
cases in which we are said to do that, we reason 
from analogy. This is well illustrated by Dugald 
Stewart. Men are said to be governed by experi- 
ence in politics or statesmanship, but no two cases 
exactly alike ever occur, and, for the most part, 
in this department what is called experience is not 
only analogy, but a remote or loose analogy. The 
same is true, and perhaps more signally, in medi- 
cine. Without undervaluing what is called expe- 
rience in that, for by it great sagacity is acquired, 
it may be said that cases seldom occur in which it 
is possible to be guided by a strict experience. 
The same name is prescribed for, but from differ- 
ence of age, constitution, habits, no two cases are 
wholly alike, and diseases properly bearing the 
same name may require, with different persons, 
at different periods, in different localities, differ* 



EXPERIENCE AND ANALOGY. 177 

ent and even opposite treatment ; while a rou 
tine practitioner, claiming that he is governed by 
experience, will take the easy, perhaps reputable, 
but perhaps also fatal course of treating them all 
alike. This uniformity of names and diversity 
of things explains the number of infallible reme- 
dies that are advertised, all claiming the sanction 
of experience. No doubt all have proved bene- 
ficial in certain cases, and would in others if they 
were exactly like them. There is the difficulty. 
There is uniformity of causation, but such a vari- 
ety of cases that it is impossible to apply the prin- 
ciple. Let any one have the rheumatism and 
he will be surprised at the number of those who 
will propose remedies that they know by experi- 
ence will cure it. What they really know is that 
they took the remedy and got well, possibly in 
spite of it. 

In theory an exact line can be drawn between 
Analogy and Experience, in practice it seldom can. 
The usage of language would make it to be Ex- 
perience when we reason from one individual of a 
species to another of the same species, and Anal- 
ogy when we reason from one species to another. 
But we can reason more safely from species to 
species on some points than from individual to in- 
dividual on others. However alike two men may 
seem, we cannot be sure that the same remedy 
that will cure one will cure the other. As dif- 
ferent as an alligator is from a man we might 
12 



178 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

be sure it would kill him to cut off his head. The 
essential thing whether in Analogy or Experience, 
is to make sure of the similarity or identity of 
that on which the reasoning turns. There may 
be great diversity in other respects, but if that be 
the same we may conclude safely. 

These processes of Induction, Analogy, and Ex- 
perience I have dwelt on because they belong to 
the regulation of our daily life. We are all, 
young and old, unlearned and learned, constantly 
carrying them on, and it is well for us to under- 
stand the ground on which they proceed. 

We now pass to 

DEDUCTION. 

This is commonly said to be opposed to Induc- 
tion, that beginning with particulars and reaching 
general truths ; this beginning with general truths 
and deducing particulars from them. So far as 
it does this, Deduction is a process that assumes, 
or may assume, the form of the syllogism, thus — 

All explosive substances are dangerous. 

Nitroglycerine is an explosive substance. 

Therefore nitroglycerine is dangerous. 

This is a form of reasoning the importance of 
which has, at times, been strangely exaggerated. 
At times, also, it has been undervalued. Even 
yet, while a man so eminent as Archbishop Whate- 
ly says that all forms of Reasoning may be 
brought under it* John Stuart Mill says it is not a 



THE SYLLOGISM. 179 

form of reasoning at all. What then are we to 
do ? Perhaps we cannot do better than first to 
explain what the process is, and then inquire re- 
specting its nature and value. 

Referring to the example given, it will be seen 
that we first affirm something of a class of sub 
stances ; that we then affirm of a particular sub- 
stance that it comes under that class, and then 
conclude that what belongs to the whole class be- 
longs also to the particular substance affirmed to 
come under it. Putting this in its most general 
form we have the dictum of Aristotle, which is 
that " Whatever may be affirmed or denied of a 
class, may be affirmed or denied of whatever 
comes under that class." Here the conclusion is 
made to depend on the class relation. Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton makes it depend on the relation 
of whole and part. His general maxim is that 
4 What is part of a part is part of the whole." 
This is more comprehensive than the other, but 
the principle is the same. In both the proof is 
wholly from the fact that one thing is included in 
another as a smaller circle is included in a larger. 

But to trace the process more particularly. We 
wish to prove to an unbeliever that nitroglycerine 
is dangerous. We have here two terms that indi- 
cate, the one a substance, the other an attribute, 
and we wish to know whether we may affirm of 
that attribute that it belongs to that substance. 
We cannot bring them together directly. We 



180 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

therefore find a third or middle term that indi- 
cates a class of substances of which we both agree 
that the attribute, dangerous, can be afiirmed. If 
now we can show that nitroglycerine comes under 
that class our point is gained. This we do, as in 
the example, by a set of comparisons. We first 
compare, in the major proposition, the major term, 
dangerous, with the middle term, explosive sub- 
stances, and find that they agree. We then com- 
pare also the minor term, nitroglycerine, with the 
same middle term, and find that they agree ; and 
we then infer that the major term, dangerous, 
agrees w T ith the minor term, nitroglycerine, on 
the principle that things which agree with the 
same thing agree with each other. Here you will 
see that I bring in another principle wider than 
that of class relations, or of whole and part, that of 
agreement, and this Whately and the logicians 
generally bring in without distinguishing it from 
those principles, or from those of identity and 
equality. Everywhere Whately asserts that all 
Reasoning can be brought under the dictum, and 
yet he lays down as the axioms of pure categorical 
syllogisms, first, " If two terms agree with one and 
the same third they agree with each other ; " sec- 
ond, " If one term agrees, and another disagrees 
with one and the same third, these two disagree 
with each other," evidently supposing that these 
axioms are identical with the dictum. But they 
are not. They are broader, and apply to cases to 



DEDUCTIVE REASONING. 181 

which neither the dictum nor the axiom of Hamil- 
ton will apply. The principle itself is different, 
and that such a man as Whately did not see this, 
setting aside as it does his theory of the syllogism 
as inclusive of all reasoning, shows the relative dif- 
ficulty and importance of a careful discrimination 
of the elements with which we deal as compared 
with a ready command of logical forms. The dic- 
tum under which he would bring all Reasoning 
does not even apply to all Deductive Reasoning, 
If I say that A equals B, B equals C, therefore 
C equals A, there is conclusive reasoning under 
the relation of equality which may perhaps come 
under that of agreement, but there is no class re- 
lation, and no whole and part. It will be found, 
and indeed enters into its very form, that the dic- 
tum, and so the syllogism, is not applicable ex- 
cept when a general concept forms a part of the 
major premiss. The regular syllogism begins 
with that ; it makes a general affirmation from 
which some particular truth is deduced, and to 
make such deduction is its province. Syllogistic 
logic teaches the proper use of general terms 
when they are employed in reasoning ; that, and 
nothing else. 

But is what we term syllogistic reasoning, rea- 
soning at all ? Yes, in the sense that all our rea- 
sonings where general terms are involved, when 
we state the process in full, assume that form. 
Let the question be, Is this man a murderer? 



182 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

Certain facts being given, you determine by a pro- 
cess of reasoning that he killed the man. But did 
he do it with malice ? You determine that also by 
a process of reasoning. You then say that — 

Murder is killing with malice prepense ; 

This man killed with malice prepense ; 

Therefore this man is a murderer. 

The proof of the murder, and the force of the 
reasoning does not turn on any manipulation of 
terms, or class relations, but on the facts which give 
us the right to use our terms, and which enable 
us to bring the individual into those class relations. 
It is not proved by the syllogism that the man 
committed the murder, but the syllogism is the 
form which the proof takes in our minds when we 
state it fully and in order. As is stated by Pres- 
ident Porter, the relation on which the proof 
turns is that of reason and consequent. 

In its form the syllogism is demonstrative. No 
one can assent to the premises without assenting 
to the conclusion, but the evidence for the conclu- 
sion is only equal to that for each of the premi- 
ses, and that can never be demonstrative. Hence, 
Unless we admit the syllogism into mathematics, 
where I do not think it belongs, it can never give 
us demonstration. Hence, too, it is evident that 
the main labor, when we would establish a fact 
by a process of which reasoning must form a part, 
will be to establish the premises and bring them 
together. That being done, the inference, which 






DEMONSTRATION AND PROBABLE REASONING 183 

is strictly the act of reasoning, is readily drawn. 
Hence, again, the inadequacy and necessary fail- 
are of logical forms taken by themselves, as they 
were among the schoolmen, in the investigation 
of truth, Doubtless it is easier to combine and 
transpose terms variously and ingeniously than to 
analyze compounds, and unravel complexities, and 
investigate facts and laws ; and the process may 
tend to a certain readiness and sharpness of intel- 
lect, but it can avail nothing by itself, and rela- 
tively little in any way to the advancement of 
truth. If we include in syllogistic logic a knowl- 
edge of the concept with its relations of extension 
and comprehension, or, as they are sometimes 
called, of quantity and quality, and also a knowl- 
edge of the relations in which the terms repre- 
senting concepts must stand to each other that 
inferences may be safely drawn, we have a wide 
and worthy field of study, but less so than that 
furnished by Experience, Analogy, and Induction. 
Perhaps it is not more important than the field in 
which our reasonings respect only individual and ab- 
stract notions and terms, and in which the principle 
of reasoning is either that of identity or equality. 
The results of Reasoning are either demonstra- 
tive or probable, and this distinction is supposed 
lo turn on the certainty or uncertainty of the con- 
clusion. It does not. It turns on the nature of 
the conclusion. Demonstration has nothing to do 
with facts, or with anything that actually exists* 



184 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

It begins with a supposition. In a mathemat- 
ical demonstration you do not demonstrate any 
thing respecting the figure that you draw. Sup- 
pose I draw what I call a right angled triangle, I 
cannot demonstrate that the angle I call a right 
angle is so. Whatever knowledge I may get of it 
I must get from the eye or from measurement. 
What I do then is to make a supposition or hy- 
pothesis. I say, let it be a right-angled triangle, 
and then it will follow that the sum of the two 
other angles will be equal to a right angle. Or, 
again, if we suppose A equal to B, and B equal 
to C, it will follow that C is equal to A. We 
cannot know that A is equal to B, or B to C, or 
if we do know it, it cannot be by demonstration. 
Beginning therefore, as a demonstration always 
must, with a supposition, it can never prove a fact. 
We reach what we may call a hypothetical truth, 
whereas, in probable reasoning, we reach a fact. 
In the one case we have no uncertainty except 
that which may be connected with the steps of 
the process ; in the other we have the uncertainty 
connected with observation and testimony. 

But not only the starting point, and so the re- 
sult, are different in a demonstration, but also the 
process. To a demonstration it is necessary that 
there should be intuitive evidence at every step. 
This is as essential as that it should begin with a 
hypothesis. 

It is to be said of demonstrative reasoning also 



MATHEMATICAL DEMONSTRATION. 185 

that it admits of no degrees. What we demon* 
strate is necessarily true, true without a doubt. 
Anything claiming to be a demonstration which 
does not give us a conclusion of which that can be 
said, is good for nothing at all. 

In all these respects probable reasoning is differ- 
ent. It starts from a fact, or from facts ; there is 
not intuitive evidence at every step, and so it ad- 
mits of degrees of every shade from the slightest 
probability up to a certainty equal to that of dem- 
onstration. The term probable is unfortunate here 
as implying some degree of doubtfulness in the 
conclusion. Ordinarily there is, but we may have 
from what is called probable evidence, and prob- 
able reasoning, a certainty as absolute as from 
demonstration. 

In probable reasoning we start from facts, and 
we prove facts ; in demonstrative reasoning we 
start from a hypothesis and proceed to our conclu- 
sion by successive intuitions ; and it seems to me 
that the processes m the two cases rest upon dif- 
ferent principles of reasoning. In the syllogism, 
saying nothing of the other branches of probable 
reasoning, we start from a general proposition which 
includes within itself the particular truth sought, 
and when the conclusion is reached it may be 
fairly said to be deduced from the premises be- 
cause it was contained in them. But in demon- 
strative reasoning, having our definitions and 
axioms, not, as is commonly said, to start from 



186 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

as if they included anything, but as conditions of 
reasoning at all, we start from a hypothesis and 
proceed, as has been said, by successive intuitions, 
making as we go such suppositions or construc- 
tions as will give us the intuition. To do this 
may require much ingenuity, and it is a part of 
the process in the original work, but is no part of 
the work of those who come after, and is not 
properly a part of the reasoning. The conclusion 
reached is not contained in anything known be- 
fore, but is seen to be true, and is connected with 
what was known by means of suppositions or con- 
structions made as we go along. If I say that A 
is equal to B, and B to 0, and so on to X, it 
will follow not only that X is equal to A, but to 
every member of the series, and this I suppose 
to be the type of much if not of all demonstrative 
reasoning. The difference between this and syl- 
logistic reasoning may be illustrated by two pos- 
sible modes of constructing a bridge. We may 
suppose a structure fastened to one bank contain- 
ing in it slides that may be drawn out, if we 
only know how, till they shall span the stream. 
Or we may suppose, as is done, that into an abut- 
ment made firm on one side there is fastened the 
support for a single step, and that we then fasten 
by clamps or bolts to the end of that the support 
for a second step, and so on till we get over. 

The common account of demonstrative reason- 
ing is that it is syllogistic, and properly deductive 



THREE FIELDS OF REASONING. 187 

rather than constructive ; and that it has for its 
major proposition either the axioms, or definitions, 
or both. It is said that is equal to A, in the 
case given, because things that are equal to the 
same thing are equal to each other, whereas the 
general proposition is no more evident than the 
particular case, and is, indeed, a generalization 
from particular cases, all having equal authority 
as intuitions. 

In presenting my view of this point I am happy 
to agree substantially with Dr. McCosh in hia 
Logic recently published. 

We have then, looking at the subject as a 
whole, three fields of reasoning under three differ- 
ent principles. The first is that of Experience, 
Analogy, and Induction, in which the principles 
are uniformity or similarity. I do not agree with 
Dr. McCosh in thinking that this can be brought 
under the syllogism. If it can in form, nothing 
is gained ; for no particle of the certainty belong- 
ing to the general axiom can be carried over to 
any particular case. 

The second field is that of general reasoning in 
which the principle is that of the class relation, or 
of whole and part by which one thing is included 
within another, but with implied reasons for their 
being thus included. This gives us the form of 
demonstration, but never its reality. 

The third field is that which has for its sub- 
ject individual concepts and abstract terms, and 



188 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

which has for its principles Identity and Equal- 
ity. 

In connection with this subject of Reasoning 
there are some inquiries and practical points that 
need attention, and 

First, If demonstrative reasoning, and, indeed, 
all mathematical reasoning as applied to realities, 
starts from hypothesis, we inquire how it comes to 
pass that it can be applied so extensively and ac- 
curately in science and in life. It is because we 
are able in both to make the hypothesis correspond 
so nearly with the fact ; or rather, it is in science 
because the physical universe is constructed on 
mathematical principles and we have been able in 
certain cases to discover what those principles are. 
If we suppose the form of the earth's orbit to be 
an ellipse, and that be the fact, we can calculate 
its time and place. If we suppose the force of 
gravity to be directly as the mass of matter, and 
inversely as the square of the distance from the 
sun, we can estimate it for any given point. If we 
suppose atoms to unite in definite proportions we 
can tell the results of a given mixture. So in life ; 
such precision of measurement and weight are 
reached, that the hypothesis will approximate the 
fact sufficiently for practical purposes. Still we 
may see how figures will lie. A man brings yon 
a bill for six cords of wood, or six tons of coal, at 
six dollars for each. The only thing certain about 
it is that six times six make thirty-six. When 



PROVING AND INFERRING, 189 

the hypothesis is at fault, or there is some error in 
our measures, or weights, or numberings, there 
are no greater liars than figures. 

We see also in connection with demonstrative 
reasoning the fallacy by which mathematicians are 
misled when they apply mathematics to the order 
of nature. That which can be demonstrated can- 
not be changed by will, and they transfer over to 
the phenomena and their order the necessity which 
belongs to demonstration as a process that is con- 
cerned only with hypotheses and abstract rela- 
tions. The influence of this fallacy is subtle and 
prevalent. 

I ask your attention also, and finally as con- 
nected with reasoning, to a practical point insisted 
on by Whately — the difference between proving 
and inferring. When a man sets himself, or is 
set, to prove anything, he has a conclusion given 
him, and his business is to find out all the con- 
siderations he can that will sustain that conclu- 
sion. A lawyer assumes the defense of an alleged 
criminal. What is his business ? It is to prove 
that he is innocent. That is what he is paid for. 
And what does he do? He does not look over 
the whole case, or care to know anything except 
what will substantiate the point that i3 given him 
to prove. Here again is a lawyer on the other 
side whose business it is to prove that the mar is 
guilty, and what does he do ? He finds out all 
the facts that bear on that, and presents them as 



190 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

strongly as he can ; and so these men are advo- 
cates. Now what does the judge do ? He com- 
pares all the facts, looks at them impartially on 
one side, and on the other, and infers from them 
the truth. 

This is a point I wish to insist on because most 
men are constantly advocates, and because I be- 
lieve that the love of the truth and fairness in 
searching for it are scarcely less essential to right 
character and the welfare of society than the tell- 
ing of the truth. But instead of this the whole 
intellectual activity of many is spent in seeking to 
substantiate what they are brought up to believe, 
or what they are determined to believe because it 
is for their interest to believe it. Men are born 
into parties, political and religious, or they are 
converted into them. They fall into cliques and 
sets, and once there, they become simply advo- 
cates, and truth has nothing further to hope from 
them in her progress. Or perhaps it is mere will 
They have adopted a theory. They have said, 
" I believe so," and are determined to make out 
that it is so because they have said it. The sin- 
cerity of most men in their belief consists in really 
believing what they have been taught, or what 
they wish to believe and seem to themselves to 
have proved, rather than in honestly seeking to 
infer the truth. But all this is utterly wrong. In 
everything that comes up bearing upon the in- 
terest of truth or of society, in all party questions, 



SYSTEMEZATION. 191 

political or religious, it is the business of every 
man to put and hold himself in the position of one 
who infers^ that is in a judicial position, and to 
hold an even balance. 

We now come to the last operation mentioned 
as performed by the Intellect, that is 

SYSTEMIZATIOJS. 

It has been said that unity in the midst of 
variety is the principle of beauty. Be this as it 
may, it is the principle of system. In unity, 
meaning by that a unit, there can be no system. 
In variety without unity there can be none, but 
when we bring variety into unity we either form, 
or enlarge a system. We bring the several parts 
that seemed unrelated into relation, and, accord- 
ing to the etymology of the word, make them 
stand up together; and it is among the higher 
joys from the Intellect to be able to do this in any 
department of nature or of study. It is, indeed, 
here, and perhaps here only, that we find the point 
of contact between the operations of the pure in- 
tellect and the sense of beauty. The sense of 
beauty is first. Partly sensuous, it acts without our 
thought, but finds gratification also in those deeper 
relations of unity in the midst of variety which 
science discovers, and goes with us, luring us on, 
into the recesses and labyrinths of nature, and find- 
ing a higher and purer delight as the sensuous ele- 
ment is eliminated. We enjoy what we see of sys- 



192 AN 0U7UNE STUDY OF MAN. 

tern as it appears superficially, but we seek some- 
thing deeper in the knowledge of its law. All law 
implies system. The discovery of a law is virtu- 
ally the discovery of a system in those things that 
come under the law, and the history of science is 
Little else than a history of the steps by which di- 
versity has been brought into unity in the different 
departments of nature and of study. It is just 
this, the bringing of diversity into unity, that we 
are now attempting to accomplish in relation to 
man, and. if one method of study be the right one, 
it must result in a system. 

The right method of study is that of analysis 
followed by synthesis. In studying a subject, or 
thing, we examine it part by part. If we find, as 
we have found in studying the body, that there 
are parts that are themselves systems, we pursue 
the same process till we reach that which, so fai 
as we can see, has only the relation of a part. We 
then study that as it is in itself and as it is related 
to the other parts, and having done this with each 
part we are prepared to put them together , into 
a whole which will thus become a system. We 
may then pass from one related system to an- 
other, each being a whole in itself, and yet a part 
of a greater whole, till we gain such a knowledge 
of the universe as one great system made up of 
related parts, as our limited capacities may enable 
us to reach. Adopting this method we place our- 
selves at the feet of Nature as learners, and if, 



SYSTEMIZATION. 193 

with child-like docility, we recognize as parts what 
she has made to be parts, and put them together 
into those wholes which she has constituted, we 
have a true science. We think the thoughts of 
God. Our systems are the systems of Nature 
and our minds are satisfied because there is a 
natural correlation between the mind and Nature 
rightly understood. 



, 



LECTURE IX. 

THE SENSIBILITY. — A GOOD. — BEAUTY. — THE 
LUDICROUS. — THE AFFECTIVE REASON. 

Hitherto we have considered the Intellect. 
We now pass to tne 

SENSIBILITY. 

But in doing this we do not leave the Intellect be- 
hind us. We take it with us. We combine it 
with the Sensibility as its condition, and thus find 
for it a new field, and get from both, as thus com- 
bined, new products. 

The Sensibility includes all that through which 
we either enjoy or suffer. Thus viewed it has 
two sources and forms. As physical beings we 
have merely sensations, and the capacity for these 
may be called a physical sensibility ; but as intel- 
ligent leings we have a wide capacity of feeling 
from what we perceive and know. We feel be- 
cause we know; and the Intellect thus becomes 
the condition of all the higher forms of feeling. 
The general statement is that each form of our 
activity is accompanied by its own feeling ; and 
that the character and rank of the feeling will be 
as that of the susceptibility or power from which 
it comes. 






SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 195 

As haying Intellect only you will remembei 
that I represented man by a single vertical line. 
To represent him as having both Intellect and 
feeling we shall need two such lines united, thus . 



PBODU0T8 OP THE INTELLECT 
BROUGHT FOBWABD. 



Let the line A represent Intellect as we have 
considered it, and as now furnished, having intui- 
tions, products of the outer and inner sense, asso- 
ciated ideas, comparisons, reasonings, systems. 
Let the line B represent the Sensibility, connect- 
ed, as you see with the Intellect, but as yet un- 
furnished. Let now this sensibility be awakened 
by an object addressed to it as well as to the In- 
tellect, and are there necessary products or results, 
that, as necessary, belong to all men, and that 
will be thrown back of the two lines, as the in- 
tuitions were thrown back of the line represent- 
ing Intellect ? I suppose there are, and whatever 
those products may be, you will observe that they 
must have in them two elements, — the intellectual 
element, and that of feeling also. It will be some- 
thing that can be designated either as an idea or 
a feeling. This being premised, I may say that it 
would be impossible for a person to have a sensi- 



196 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

bility rightly constituted, and to perceive an ob- 
ject adapted to it, without knowing the object as 
good, and without having an idea of the enjoy- 
ment produced by it as A GOOD. Thus, then, a 
good, or the good, I regard as the fundamental 
idea which is given by a sensibility, given to all 
men, given necessarily, and holding a relation to 
those processes which are connected with Intel- 
lect and Sensibility combined, similar to that held 
by the idea of Being in the processes of Intellect 
alone. You can have no thought of which the 
idea of Being is not an element, and, the Sensibility 
being given, you can have no form of activity that 
is normal throughout, of which good is not an ele- 
ment. Of course a sensibility is capable of work- 
ing both ways, perhaps necessarily. As a fact, I 
think that beings with a sensibility in any form 
are capable of suffering just in proportion as they 
are capable of enjoyment. But their suffering is 
not necessary ; it is not that which a sensibility 
was constituted to give, and therefore we say that 
the product of a sensibility is a good. This may 
be either from the action upon our organization of 
those surroundings which God has so wonderfully 
correlated to it ; or from our independent activity ; 
or from the interaction of our minds with other 
minds ; or, which is highest of all, from such spir- 
itual revelations as God can make of Himself di- 
rectly, and not through his works. In each case 
we have the same fundamental idea extending it> 



A GOOD AND GOODNESS. 197 

§elf through all the operations of the Sensibility, 
but differing constantly both in quantity and in 
quality with the faculties exercised, and the objects 
upon which they are exercised. Always, however 
induced, there is an activity of our own from which 
the enjoyment is the immediate outcome as the 
fragrance is from the flower. 

To this word, good^ I ask attention, because of 
the different senses in which it is used, and be- 
cause we can never speak or write understandingly 
on morals till its meaning shall be fixed. It is, I 
suppose, conceded by all, that enjoyment, and all 
enjoyment, is from the Sensibility; and that en- 
joyment is a good. Is there anything that is a 
good that is not from the Sensibility? All feeling, 
you will observe, has its origin in the Sensibility. 
We think, and we will, and act. Resulting from 
each of these forms of activity there is feeling. Is 
that feeling from the Sensibility ? So I suppose. 
If not, it would not be the Sensibility. But if it is 
from the Sensibility, then I inquire whether there is 
anything that can be called a good that is not from 
that. Suppose all beings as insensible as a stone, 
could there be anything that would be either good, 
or a good ? There are now many things adapted 
to produce enjoyment in the Sensibility, and these 
are good. There are also persons who devote 
themselves to the promotion of enjoyment in its 
highest forms, and to its greatest possible extent 
by putting forth themselves, and leading others 



198 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

to put forth, the highest possible forms of activity 
and these are also good. They have goodness, but 
if there were no enjoyment or satisfaction possi- 
ble in any sensibility that could become a good, 
there could be nothing good ; and there could be no 
goodness. There could be no obligation to choose 
in one way rather than in another, and there could 
be nothing right or wrong. You will see, there- 
fore, that that combination or fusion of Intellect 
and Sensibility from which we get the rational idea 
of a good as something valuable in itself is not only 
essential as a motive to rational action, but also as 
a condition for the very formation of moral ideas ; 
and it is to that that I think the word good, used 
as a noun, should be confined. But instead of this, 
you will find the word constantly used in discussions 
on morals for goodness. It is not perhaps strange, 
since we speak so constantly of a good man to in- 
dicate a state of the will, that we should speak of 
the state itself as the good ; but a state of the Will 
is one thing, and a state of the Sensibility entirely 
another. In the one we have moral quality; in 
the other not, and hence the need of terms that 
will discriminate them perfectly. We will then 
call the normal state of the Will goodness ; and the 
normal state of the Sensibility from any form of 
activity a good ; and this we place on the left hand 
side of the two lines as the first of our regulative 
ideas in this department, and one that must be a 
condition for any others. 



BEAUTY. 199 

What other necessary and universal idea have 
we in the same way ? Suppose a person with fur- 
nished intellect and endowed with sensibility, to 
Bee for the first time a rainbow. I ask you if it 
would be possible that he should not have the 

idea of 

beauty. 

I say the idea, but might also say the feeling, 
for we use one word as freely as the other, thus 
testifying to the complex nature and double origin 
of the product. It is this complex nature and 
double origin that has caused difficulty in the dis- 
cussion of beauty. Is Beauty a feeling ? So say 
some. Is it an idea ? So say some. Is it both 
united and yet really one thing, the product of a 
mental chemistry to J^e known and treated as one 
thing, as water is? So say others, and with them 
I agree. We shall find that there is quite a num- 
ber of these products the nature and function of 
which we can understand only as we know their 
origin. Thus with Beauty. Has it an element of 
feeling ? That must be in the mind, and can be 
only what it is felt to be. There can be no feeling 
nor anything resembling a feeling in an external 
object. So far, therefore, beauty must be sub- 
jective. It will be like an odor, the intellectual 
fragrance of the beautiful object. But, again, ia 
Beauty an idea ? Then it must be from qualities in 
the object apprehended by the intellect, and so far 
as Beauty is from those qualities in the object which 



200 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

originate the idea, or rather is those qualities, it is 
objective. And as we give the name sometimes to 
that in the object which produces the feeling, and 
sometimes to the feeling, and oftener make no dis- 
tinction between the two, it is easy to see how dis- 
putants may use the same word and be thinking of 
different things, or, at least, of different aspects of 
the same thing, and thus seem to differ when they 
really agree. 

This view of the origin and nature of Beauty will 
enable us to solve the speculative difficulties re- 
specting it, and it will only be left to inquire what 
that is in the object which produces the feeling. 
Upon this we shall not enter. The feeling will 
vary with its object, from the slightest impression 
of mere sensuous beauty, up to its more complex 
and highest forms, till indeed it passes into sublim- 
ity, which some regard as a separate element and 
idea, but which is so far of the same kind that we 
need not treat of it separately here. 

From what has now been said, we feel authorized 
to put down Beauty as the second joint necessary 
product of the Intellect and the Sensibility. 

What next ! There is another part of our na- 
ture, somewhat extensive and varied, for which no 
one word will suffice, but which may perhaps be 
indicated as well as in any way, by the word Ludi- 
crous, or 



THE LUDICROUS. 201 

THE LUDICROUS. 

This gives us a field of the lighter emotions 
awakened by a perception of some form of incon- 
gruity, or of some unexpected and sportive com- 
bination, — 

" Smiles from reason flow, 
To brutes denied." 

So says Milton, and I think he was right. Brutes 
are sportive, but I know of no evidence that they 
have that combined apprehension and feeling, 
which go to make up either the ludicrous, the ridic- 
ulous, or the witty. Clearly we have here again 
both the idea and the feeling combined into one 
product. 

This field of the Ludicrous we are not called 
upon to enter. It is legitimate. It is right in its 
place, and runs out into many forms of humor, fun, 
and drollery. I will simply say before leaving it, 
that I do not agree with those writers who hold that 
laughter aways has in it an element of contempt. 
I think it often an expression of mere merriment, 
and in the purest good nature. 

We put down, then, back of the two lines, and as 
our third regulative idea in this department, the 
Ludicrous. Is there any other idea to be placed 
there ? I think not ; and it only remains to in- 
quire what we shall call the faculty or power which 
gives us these ideas. Sir William Hamilton 
speaks particularly of the deficiency of our nomen- 
clature in this department, and it is to be regret- 



202 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

ted. This power — for it is not properly a faculty 
as not subject to the will — has no name, but it 
needs one. In its independence of the Will, and 
hence in its universality and necessity, it resembles 
what we called " The Reason," when we were con- 
sidering the Intellect alone. It differs from it only 
as it acts with the Sensibility, and so has in the 
product an element from that. What we need, 
therefore, is the right qualifying word to indicate 
that. But there is no such word. The only one 
I can think of that will do at all, is Affective. If 
we adopt that, we shall call it the Affective Reason, 
meaning by that a reason whose product has the 
power of affecting us as a motive, which the ideas 
of the pure reason have not. This is a real dis- 
tinction ; it is one that needs to be made, and the 
word is not a bad one. But not accepting this, 
we may either take a name from one of the minor 
functions of the power, and call it the iEsthetie 
Reason, or let it go without a name. I will put 
the two names down under the products we have 
considered, and you may choose for yourselves. 

In connection with the fundamental idea of Good 
the Sensibility assumes different forms, which we 
now proceed to consider. Of these the first and 
lowest is Appetite, or 

THE APPETITES. 

These, together with the other forms of the Sen- 
sibility that will be considered in this Lecture, 



THE APPETITES. 203 

were treated of by me in this place eleven years 
ago ; and what 1 then said was published in the 
" Lectures on Moral Science." We may therefore 
treat them the more briefly. 

The Appetites are those cravings of the animal 
nature that have for their object the well-being 
of the body, and the continuance of the race. As 
the means of sustaining and continuing the race, 
they are the condition of all other forms of the 
Sensibility, and so are lower than they. Their 
characteristics are that they take their rise from 
the body, are periodical, and have a physical limit ; 
and any craving that has these characteristics may 
properly be called an appetite. 

The Appetites commonly mentioned are those of 
Hunger, Thirst, and Sex. But according to what 
has just been said, the periodical craving for sleep 
and for air may rank here. If the intervals of 
breathing were such as to create a conscious de- 
sire for air and an effort to obtain it, no doubt the 
craving would be ranked among the Appetites. 
And so, if we would know how many appetites 
there are, we must inquire how many things there 
are generically that are necessary for the well- 
being of the body, and we may be sure there will 
be within the body a craving for those things. 
We may give them one name, or different names, 
but they are really one thing, the manifestation 
in different forms of one principle, that is, a crav- 
ing, or going out in all directions after such things 
as are needed for the well-being of the body. 



204 AN OUTLINE STUDY OP MAN. 

As the Appetites have the lowest place in 4 our 
sensitive organization, it is natural that any abuse 
of them should be concealed ; and hence while the 
corruption and degradation through them are so 
fearful and extensive, they are, for the most part, 
covered up. They are so until human beings be- 
come lost to shame, for shame is the principle 
placed in our constitution to guard against what 
is low and mean, as conscience is to guard against 
what is wrong. 

In their natural state, without artificial stimu- 
lants, and with a regular and adequate supply of 
food, the Appetites are self regulating, and when 
they are thus left to themselves, or are in any 
way properly regulated, man is not degraded by 
them. Let a man eat that he may live and do his 
proper work, and he is a man ; but let him live 
that he may eat, or give himself up to any form 
of sensual or merely sensitive gratification, and ho 
is degraded ; his face is towards Egypt and its 
flesh-pots to the neglect of the pillar of cloud 
and of fire, and of the promised land. 

But there are artificial appetites as well as those 
that are natural. These have all the character- 
istics of an appetite except its beneficial effects. 
They often bring men into a bondage more abso- 
lute and degrading than that from any natural 
appetite ; but as they do not belong necessarily to 
the constitution, they need not be treated of here. 
I will only observe that the strong probability is. 



INSTINCT. 205 

that God gave man originally as many appetites 
as it was best he should have ; and that I do not 
believe that any man ever gained anything on the 
whole by creating an artificial appetite. I believe 
that purer and more lasting physical enjoyment will 
come from the natural appetites alone, if properly 
regulated, and that the system will be better fitted 
through them to minister to those higher functions 
and enjoyments of the intellect and the heart that 
belong specifically to man. 

Appetite is a craving ; but how shall it know 
where to find its object? The young calf craves 
food, but how shall it know where to find it? 
Here comes in 

INSTINCT. 

This is needed where it is impossible that Intel- 
lect should act. The Appetite craves, Instinct 
directs. The Appetite is presentative, the Instinct 
is regulative. Instinct is a kind of unintelligent, 
affective reason, as that has just been defined. It 
directs to ends, but presupposes that means and 
conditions are supplied by an intelligence out of 
itself, and if these are wanting it knows nothing 
of the mode of supplying them. It forecasts the 
seasons, and proceeds on the widest knowledge of 
the laws of nature and of the order of events. It 
knows the fact of the law of gravitation, and the 
doctrine of specific gravities. The setting hen turns 
over her eggs regularly by ruffling them, because 



206 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

she knows that the specific gravity of the yolk 
is greater than that of the white, and that if the 
yolk should touch the shell at the bottom, it would 
prevent the growth of the chick. That is a thing 
that men did not find ouf for thousands of years. 
Hens knew it always. But then the hen does not 
know a glass egg from a real one ; she does not 
know a duck's egg from one of her own, and is 
utterly bewildered when the young ducks, guided 
by an instinct which tells them that they have 
webbed feet, run at once into the water. Instinct 
assumes a given condition of things, which noth- 
ing but intelligence, and I may say a Divine In- 
telligence, could arrange. Let that condition exist, 
and nothing can be more admirable and perfect 
than its movements and their results ; but change 
the condition and it is wholly baffled. The pro- 
pensity works on, but works in the dark. A 
beaver, caught and confined in a room, will gnaw 
any wood it can find and make a dam of it where 
there is no water. That is instinct. When it is 
perfect it has no power to profit by experience, or 
to modify conditions. In that case Instinct is at 
its maximum, and Intelligence at its minimum ; 
but as we rise in the scale intelligence increases 
until we come to man, and in him intelligence is 
a,t its maximum, and instinct at its minimum. 
This relation of Instinct to Intelligence, was, I un- 
derstand, put upon the board by President Chad 
bourne in his Lectures here two years since on In- 
stinct, in this way : — 



THE DESIRES. 



207 



Let the lower triangle represent Instinct, and the 
upper one Intelligence, and it will be seen that as 
we go upward Instinct diminishes, and Intelli- 
gence increases, until Instinct has come to a point, 
and Intelligence has reached its maximum. 

It is to be said, however, that we never reach a 
point where Instinct is wholly absent. In going 
up, according to the system we are working out, 
we leave nothing behind, and so we carry Instinct 
with us, or something of the same nature, all the 
way up. The principle of Instinct is involved in 
all involuntary tendency towards an end; and 
when it is unperverted man may rationally com- 
mit himself to its guidance. An intelligent, or 
rather, a rational being, having an instinct, knows 
that instinct to be what it is, and knowing that, 
he may rationally, and most wisely, commit him- 
self to its guidance. 

We now pass to 



THE DESIRES. 

These have the same relation to the well-being 
of the mind that the appetites have to that of the 
body. If we would know how many appetites 
there are, we must inquire how many things differ- 
ing generically there are that are needed for the 
well-being of the body, and we may be sure there 



208 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

will be within the body an instinctive craving for 
those things. We may give them one name or 
different names, but there is really one principle, 
that is, a craving or going out in all directions for 
that which, is needed for the well-being of the 
body. So it is with the Desires. They are cravings 
for those things which are necessary for the up- 
building of a perfect mind. What then are those 
things which it is necessary our minds should have 
that they may become, and continue to be, what 
they are capable of being ? 

In the first place, if we are to be or to do any- 
thing, it is necessary that we should continue to 
exist. We put down, then, as the first and lowest 
of the Desires, that of 

CONTINUED EXISTENCE. 

Continuing to exist, we shall need to have, and 
to hold in our possession, that which will enable 
us to enjoy our existence. This gives us 

THE DESIRE OF PROPERTY. 

Existing, and having that which will enable 
him to enjoy existence, man needs to know how 
to use himself and it. Hence he has 

THE DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

This desire has, however, wider relations than 
would be thus indicated. Knowledge is the con 
dition of all rational action, and of all tho higher 
emotions. 



DESIRE OF POWER AND ESTEEM. 209 

Existing, possessing, knowing, man is also ca- 
pable of doing many things, and of becoming 
what he is not. This implies the power of doing 
and becoming. It evidently belongs to the per- 
fection of our nature that we should have power, 
and hence we set down as next in order 

THE DESIRE OF POWER. 

The desires already mentioned are requisite to 
the perfection of the individual. But man is 
placed in relation to his fellows, and he needs some 
desire that will make him instrumental in the 
promotion of their well-being, and the perfection 
of society. Hence he needs, and has, 

THE DESIRE OF ESTEEM. 

These five seem to me to be the original and 
primary desires. The words indicating them are 
put in their general form, as Property, for instance. 
What is property ? It may be farms, houses, bank 
stock, money. The term simply groups in a class 
all those things with reference to each of which the 
desire acts specifically ; and I suppose that these 
are original desires and act immediately and nee 
essarily on the presentation of their objects. 

But besides the desires just mentioned, there 
are those who contend that we have a desire of 
Happiness, of Liberty, and of Society. 

What has been termed the desire of Happiness, 
I prefer to speak of as « 

14 



210 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN 



THE DESIRE OP GOOD. 

This term I prefer, because it includes in the 
minds of all, as the term happiness does not, all 
the normal products of the Sensibility; and it is 
of all those products that we are now speaking. 
The normal product of the Sensibility in any of 
its forms is a good, and is desirable in itself ; but 
with many the term Happiness is contrasted with 
pleasure, and does not include the good that comes 
through the sensitive organization. The term 
also represents to most minds a permanent state in 
which there is an aggregate of good, and a pre- 
ponderance of it over suffering, whereas the root 
of desire, its generic element, is found in the in- 
herent desirableness of every normal product of 
the Sensibility. We here reach, as in the Intel- 
lect, a simple and primitive element. Thought, 
the product of the Intellect, is essentially intelli- 
gent. The Intellect is inherently and natively a 
Knower, and knows itself as such. In the same 
way the normal product of the Sensibility is essen- 
tially desirable. Inherently and natively the Sen- 
sibility is a giver of good, which is immediately 
and necessarily known as a good, and so as desi- 
rable. 

But admitting what ±ias now been said, ought 
not the desire of Good to be placed among the 
original and primitive desires-? Does not every 
one desire good? Yes, but the peculiarity is 



THE DESIRE OF GOOD. 211 

that no one can will to seek good directly. The 
mechanism of the constitution is that we have 
Bpecific desires for individual things with refer- 
ence to which we can put forth specific acts of 
choice and volition, and that on the attainment 
of these things good comes spontaneously. We 
desire immediately, and choose and take the 
bread ; its sweetness and nourishment come of 
their own accord. As I have said elsewhere, the 
good " does not lie proximate to the will." It is 
the common result of all forms of activity when 
objects directly chosen are attained. Entering 
thus as the common element into all the desires, 
it cannot be classed as in the same rank with any 
one of them. It has, indeed, the same relation to 
all specific forms of desire that consciousness has 
to all the other mental operations. It is some- 
thing different from any one of them ; it is com- 
mon to them all, and is that without which no one 
of them could be. 

We conclude, then, that it would not be phil- 
osophical to class the desire of Good, or, if any 
choose to call it so, of Happiness, with those spe- 
cific desires, by the objects of which the Will is 
directly called into action. 

In connection with the view now presented, it 
may be well to notice the provision made in the 
constitution for activity as the condition of enjoy- 
ment. In strictness all enjoyment is from activ- 
ity, but it differs as the activity is originated from 



212 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

without or from within. Enjoyment from activity 
originating from without, is sometimes called pas* 
sive enjoyment and pleasure, and it is not as high 
as that from activity originated from within. The 
highest enjoyment is an involuntary result of ac- 
tivity originating from within, coming from it as 
the fragrance from the flower ; and the higher the 
faculties brought into action, and the more in- 
tense the activity, if it be normal, the higher 
will be the enjoyment. In no other way is there 
enjoyment to 

- " The rapt seraph that adores and bums." 

The highest results, either for himself or others, 
can be reached by man only through intelligent 
action originating from within. 

And what is true of Good as a condition of De- 
sire, is true of 

THE DESIRE OF LIBERTY, 

as a condition of action. By Liberty here is not 
meant that liberty of choice without which there 
cannot be a will in freedom, but the liberty to 
carry out our choices in action. A man in prison 
has, as a man, all the liberty of choice, and all 
the elements and conditions of freedom under a 
moral government that are possible, but he has 
not liberty of action. Of beings born with 
powers of whatever kind, it is to be said that 
they are not so much born with a desire of free- 
dom, as that they are born free, and naturally 



THE DESIRE OF SOCIETY. 213 

struggle against whatever would limit their legit- 
imate action. To be born with that which may 
be taken away, and will then be desired as the 
condition of obtaining other things, is wholly dif- 
ferent from being born with a desire of that 
which is to be attained. Like that of good, the 
first will be a general and constant element, and 
cannot be properly classed with the specific de- 
sires. 

It only remains to speak of 

THE DESIRE OF SOCIETY. 

All the writers place this among the original 
desires, and perhaps rightly. I have no zeal 
about it. There certainly is a gregarious instinct 
among animals, and perhaps among men, but so- 
ciety is so far something that we are born into, 
and a condition for the gratification of other de- 
sires, and for the exercise of the affections and 
higher faculties, that I rather prefer to place it 
with the desire of good and of liberty, and to 
write it down so as to show that it enters as an 
element into the operation of other faculties. 

The place I give to these three desires — that 
of Good, of Liberty, and of Society — does not 
disparage them. It makes them more funda- 
mental as pertaining more fully to our nature, as 
entering more deeply into its operations, and as 
involved in everything that is dearest to us. 

Of the Desires in general it is to be said, that 



214 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

while they have reference to the good of the indi- 
vidual, they are not selfish. They may become 
BOj or they may be exercised in the interest of 
benevolence. How is a man to be effectively 
benevolent unless he has property, or power, or 
knowledge, or esteem ? He has power to do good 
precisely as he possesses these, and in gaining 
them through the active operation of the natural 
desires, he may be acting benevolently. It is a 
misapprehension to suppose, when a man is seek- 
ing to build himself up in these things, that he is 
necessarily acting selfishly. He may be seeking 
to build himself up in that nature which God has 
given him, and which he is under obligation to 
perfect, and, as an instrument of good, to make as 
efficient as possible. The man who can gain the 
power to wield a great assembly for good, to put 
down oppression, to sit as a judge and direct the 
judicial sentiment of the community, is in fault 
if he does not do it. 

But, while the Desires are not necessarily selfish, 
they tend in that direction, and we are to be on 
our guard against the law by which they act. 

The Appetites have a physical limit, which 
operates as a kind of bodily conscience, but if a 
man puts himself under the control of one of the 
desires there is nothing of the kind. On the con- 
trary, if a man puts himself under one of these 
desires, as that of property, it will grow by be- 
ing indulged, till he becomes absorbed and en- 



THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 215 

slaved by it. He may say that he cares nothing 
for property except for its use, — and perhaps he 
does not at the time ; that he will go on getting 
it up to a certain point and then devote it to a 
given use ; but as he goes on and accumulates he 
holds on to it with a firmer grasp, and when he 
has the ability to do what he thought he would, he 
has lost the disposition, and perhaps even becomes 
miserly. So is it with all the desires, and there- 
fore, as I have said, we are to be on our guard 
respecting them. 

The Appetites and the Desires have reference 
to self and its well-being ; but we need, in addi- 
tion to the desire of esteem, a form of the Sensi- 
bility which will bring us into relation to others 
as also capable of well-being, and this we find in 

THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 

These are wholly different in their nature from 
the Desires. As Affections they do not appropri- 
ate anything ; they give. At the same time they 
contain in themselves an element of desire, so that 
the Desires are a condition for the Affections. This 
is so, because if there be an intelligent affection 
for any being, or, indeed, an affection of any kind, 
there must be a desire for the well-being of that 
being. Hence the Affections are conditioned on 
the Desires. They take that desire of good for 
ourselves through which we come to estimate good 



216 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

rightly, and make it the basis of a feeling towards 
others by which their good becomes our immediate 
object, so that we are able to love them as our- 
selves. This is true of the affections in general, 
whether natural or moral, so far, at least, as there 
can be said to be love in natural affection. They 
have the good of others for their direct object. 

The Natural Affections differ from the moral, 
in manifesting themselves spontaneously and with 
no reference to any previous action of the Will ; 
whereas the Moral Affections depend, both for 
their being and character, upon the previous ac- 
tion of the Will. Indirectly, and after they have 
revealed themselves as independent facts in our 
constitution, the Will may have power over the 
Natural Affections. They may be indulged and 
cultivated, or they may be repressed and dwarfed. 
Hence want of natural affection may become, as 
it is made in the Scriptures to be, an evidence of 
moral depravity. These affections are common to 
both animals and man. Rising spontaneously, 
they prompt both to do what they can for the 
good of those that are made naturally dependent 
upon them. 

The Natural Affections have generally been di- 
vided into the benevolent and the malevolent. 
These terms I do not accept, or, at least, I do not 
think them happy. They imply the action of a 
will fully constituted, whereas we have not yet 
reached that. In the proper sense of those words 



THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 217 

I do not apprehend that an animal can be either 
benevolent or malevolent. Where an animal, as 
the parent bird, does good to another, it is from 
no rational estimate and choice of the good as a 
motive lying before it, and so as good willing, but 
from a beneficent, spontaneous, constitutional im- 
pulse, prompting from behind ; and so far as man 
is governed by mere natural affection this is 
equally true of him. And while this is true of 
the good done, it is equally true of the beast of 
prey that he has no malevolence towards his vic- 
tim. He does not hate him ; he simply wishes to 
eat him. What, then, shall we call these affec- 
tions ? Those which lead to the doing of good I 
would call beneficent. They are so ; just that, 
and nothing more. Whether in animals or in 
man, there is no benevolence about them. 

The beneficent affections, as thus defined, in- 
clude a wide range, and play an important part in 
both animal and human life. They correspond 
throughout to those natural relations, as of parent 
and offspring, through which there is mutual de- 
pendence, and on which life in communities must 
depend. 

But, calling those affections beneficent which 
have for their object the production of good, what 
shall we call their opposite? They have been 
called " malevolent," but there is in them properly 
no will. They are from a tendency, a mechanism, 
a nature. They are a part of an original consii- 



218 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

fcution, and have for their object, not the produc- 
tion of misery as such, but the well-being of the 
individual, or of the community of which the indi- 
vidual is a part. It is here that our nomenclature 
is most deficient. We need some word to indicate 
that inherent something in everything that has 
life by which it asserts itself, and its right to be, 
in the full exercise of its legitimate powers, and 
this, if need be, to the destruction of that which 
opposes itself to it. Up to this point we might, 
perhaps, call the affection Defensive, but it often 
goes further. While there can be, in this region, 
no conception of punishment in its proper nature, 
there is evidently something retributive. The 
foundation for this, however, lies in the being, not 
as malevolent, but as a guard against future evil. 
I would then call those Natural Affections which 
are productive of evil to others, either simply De- 
fensive, or Defensive and Punitive. This, like 
Beneficent, would indicate their office in the con- 
stitution. There is no natural affection, either in 
animals or in man, that has for its object the 
production of evil for evil's sake. 

A difficulty with us in treating of the Natural 
Affections is from the tendency of the Moral Affec- 
tions to blend with them. This blending is in- 
evitable, and hence the impossibility of our inter- 
preting with certainty those actions in animals 
which seem to correspond with our own In 
judging of the characteristics of either men or 



THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 219 

animals we need to know their natural affections, 
as modified by their constitution, for individuals 
of the same species differ greatly in regard to 
these ; but in judging of character we need to 
know the moral affections. 

In connection with the different forms of the 
Sensibility which we have considered, there nat- 
urally arise the emotions of hope and fear, of joy 
and sorrow. Indeed, desire and affection, with 
the prospect that their object will be reached, 
become hope ; with the prospect of failure, they 
become fear. Attaining their ends, desire and 
affection become joy ; failing of them, they be- 
come sorrow. Persons habitually anticipating 
and hoping for the objects of desire and those 
proposed by affection, are cheerful ; those habit- 
ually anticipating the reverse, fall into gloom and 
settled despondency. " Hope deferred maketh the 
heart sick ; but when the desire cometh it is a tree 
of life." Thus do we find in the Sensibility the 
source of our activity ; and thus do we see how 
there spring up from within it, as Hope and Fear, 
the two great and opposite gales of life. 

We have thus finished what I propose to say on 
this part of our nature. If we present it at one 
view, in a diagram constructed according to the 
principle we have adopted, it will stand thus 
(reading it from the bottom upward as we do 
with all other diagrams) : — 



220 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN 



E 

H 

fa 

OD 


H 


0) 

fa 


D 





r PUNITIVE. 








NATURAL AFFECTIONS : < 


defensive, 
[beneficent, 










ESTEEM. 




(*' 


»s 




POWER, 


O 
O 



E* 


&• 


DESIRES : < 


KNOWLEDGE, 
PROPERTY, 


H 


H 

o 






.EXISTENCE 




t4 


CO 



INSTINCT. THE INSTINCTS. 
OF SEX. 
FOR SLEEP, 
APPETITES ' • FOR AIR, 

OF THIRST, 
OF HUNGER, 



THE LUDICROUS. 

BEAUTY, 

GOOD, 



AFFECTIVE OR ESTHETIC 
REASON. 



i 


O 


a 




a 

OQ 


H 
S3 

M 







PRODUCTS OF INTELLECT 
BROUGHT UP TO BE THE 
CONDITION OF THE ACTIV- 
ITY OF THE SENSIBILITY 
AND THE INTELLECT. 



INTELLECT AND SENSIBILITY. 



LECTURE X. 

INTELLECT, SENSIBILITY, AND WILL.— THE PRAC- 
TICAL REASON. — PERSONALITY, CAUSATION, 
FREEDOM, OBLIGATION, MERIT AND DEMERIT, 
RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITY, PUNISHMENT. 

We have not yet found Man. Unconsciously, 
perhaps unavoidably, we have carried ourselves 
back, and have supposed our whole selves to be 
present in the different processes we have consid- 
ered. Doing this, it is impossible for us to be 
sure what the processes of a mere animal are, or 
what the condition would be of a being having 
intellect only, or intellect combined with feeling. 
These different departments can be conceived of, 
and be considered separately, just as we can con- 
ceive and treat separately of the sides and angles 
of a triangle, but so great is their unity that one 
seldom if ever acts without the other. The ele- 
ments are so blended that it is difficult to analyze 
them ; and besides, what mankind generally care 
for is the result, and not the elements or combina- 
tion by which it is produced. 

Thus far we have considered the body, and the 
two lower divisions of the mind, the Intellect and 
the Sensibility. These are indispensable condi- 
tions for the being and action of 



222 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 



THE RATIONAL WILL. 

Without the Intellect there is no light, without 
the Sensibility there is no motive. As distinguished 
from mere impulse, rational will involves rational 
choice ; but without the Intellect there can be no 
rationality, and without the Sensibility there can be 
nothing to choose. With these we have all that 
we need, not as a cause, but as a condition for the 
Will. 

As possessed of Intellect alone, we have repre- 
sented man by one line ; as possessed of Intellect 
and Sensibility we have represented him by two 
lines united, and we now represent him as pos- 
sessed of Intellect, Sensibility, and Will, by three 
lines united, thus, — 



Before the Intellect, which stands in front, we 
bring up, and suppose to be present, the various 
products of the Intellect and the Sensibility in 
their combination. These the Intellect apprehends. 
By them, as thus apprehended, the Sensibility is 



THE WILL. 223 

affected, and then the Will acts in view of the op- 
erations of both the Intellect and the Sensibility. 
Objects presented to the senses — objects of Appe- 
tite, of Desire, and of the Affections — are supposed 
to be presented before the man now fully consti- 
tuted, and we inquire what new phenomena must, 
and what may result from the possession of Will. 

But first what is Will ? By Will, or the Will, 
we do not mean anything that has a separate and 
independent existence. We mean by it that con- 
stituent of man's being by which he is capable of 
free action, knowing himself to be thus capable ; 
judt as we mean by the Intellect, that constituent 
of his being by which he is capable of thought, 
knowing himself to be thus capable. If we would 
understand the nature of Will we must go back 
to the beginning of our course, and we shall find 
that there is in it a synthesis of both of the great 
elements which we have considered, and some- 
thing added. We began, as you remember, with 
gravitation, that is with force, — that mysterious 
Bomething which all classes of thinkers are obliged 
to recognize and assume, but which nobody com- 
prehends ; we began with that, acting necessarily, 
and, so far as we can understand, by a physical 
necessity. In the same way we knew all the 
physical and vital forces, — Cohesion, Chemical 
Affinity, Vegetable Life, and Animal Life, as 
necessitated. We next passed to the Intellect 
and its different faculties, and what did we find 



224 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

there ? We found, in addition to force, the power 
of insight and comprehension. And here again, 
the movement was subject, if not to a physical, 
yet to a logical necessity. In the Intellect, taken 
by itself, there is no freedom. But rational 
choice, which is the fundamental, the voluntary, 
and moral part of the Will, is impossible without 
comprehension ; and volition, which is the execu- 
tive part of the Will, is futile and nugatory with- 
out force. 

Thus do these two, the power of choice and the 
power of volition, become constituents of the will, 
essential powers of a being acting rationally; 
and thus does the Will imply and involve the two 
great elements of Intellect and Force. Intellect 
it implies in connection with choice, for the pur- 
pose of comprehension and rationality ; and Force 
in connection with volition, for the purpose of ex- 
ecution. We see then, at this point, distinctly, 
the two elements of which Will is composed, the 
power of choice and the power of volition, each of 
which is essential to the being and the expression 
of Personality, in which, in order to constitute 
Will, the two must unite. Choice presupposea 
both Intellect and Sensibility ; Sensibility and its 
products to constitute ends, and Intellect to show 
their relative value and the means of attaining 
them. Volition presupposes force, or rather ia 
nugatory except in a being endowed with force. 

These elements of Will, choice and volition, 



CHOICE AND VOLITION. 225 

have not been distinguished as they should have 
been, and in consequence, the discussions respect- 
ing the Will have been perplexed. The cause 
of the perplexity is that one of the elements is 
subject to necessity. What we need to know is 
the point of freedom. That is in choice, and in 
that only. Choice being once fully made, volition 
follows of course. It may not follow at once : 
the choice may abide alone, but when the voli- 
tion comes it is born of choice. There will of 
course, then, be a radical difference between the 
idea of freedom as consisting in the power of 
choice, and in the power to carry out our choices. 
The one is absolute, and so belongs to us that to 
be deprived of it we must be destroyed. The 
other is contingent, and we can be deprived of it 
by accident or disease, or by the will of others. 
The one is the essential element of freedom man- 
ifesting itself in the spiritual realm, and is the 
immediate object of the divine government ; the 
other simply instrumental and executive, and is 
that of which human governments chiefly take 
cognizance. 

And in connection with these two elements of 
Will, the one free and the other necessitated, we 
may see the harmony there is between freedom 
and necessity, and the need of necessity in ordei 
to freedom. If the freedom is to result in re- 
sponsibility, or is to avail anything with respect to 
conduct, there must be in connection with it a sys- 

15 



226 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

tern of necessity. A man stands by a stream of 
water. He has the power to turn it in this direc 
tion for the purpose of irrigation, or in that for the 
purpose of destruction, and this power he has, with 
the attendant responsibility, simply because the 
stream is subject to invariable and necessary law. 
If he could not control it by such a law, he could 
not know what the consequences would be, and 
would not be responsible for them. Hence the 
region of freedom, to which we now come, is 
wholly conditioned on the previous regions of ne- 
cessity — physical, vital, and intellectual — through 
which we have passed. 

In connection with this control of force by the 
Will, implying, as in itself, both force and causa- 
tive energy, it is to be said that it is from the Will 
that we have the origin of our ideas of force and 
causation. It might be supposed that we should 
know force and causation on simply beholding 
physical changes. Not so. If we had not had 
these ideas from our own causative energy, we 
Bhould have seen nothing in physical changes but 
mere succession ; but, as inherent in mind, such 
causative energy must reveal itself to mind as a 
matter of course. Hence in knowing himself as 
possessed of will, man must know himself as a 
cause, and whenever he sees causation exerted in 
connection with evidence of intelligence, he nat- 
arally attributes it to mind. This is a cardinal 
point, because the whole evidence for the presence 



A GREAT TRANSITION. 227 

of mind in nature turns upon it. The order of 
uature depends upon its changes, and if mind is 
not the original cause of the changes then it is not 
of its order, and so there is no proof in nature for 
the being of a God. This is what Positivism says. 
It oays that we see nothing, and know nothing, 
and can profitably speculate about nothing except 
mere orders of succession. But this is virtually 
atheism. We do know causation as belonging to 
ourselves. We recognize intuitively the results of 
intelligent causation, and from such results can 
rationally infer their cause. 

In thus reaching a Will in freedom, a rational 
Will, we make a great transition. Points of tran- 
sition we have reached before, but none equal to 
this. Our progress upward has not been by a 
continuous line but by steps bringing in new ele- 
ments, and raising us on to a new platform. So 
I have represented it in the figure. Gravitation 
does not involve cohesion, or shade into it. Co- 
hesion is a new thing brought in. So is chemical 
affinity. So is vegetable life ; it is a thing wholly 
new. All the way up there are points of transi- 
tion in which we come to something absolutely 
new ; but, as I have said, there is no point like 
this. We here reach, not spontaneity, which is 
wholly different from freedom, though sometimes 
confounded with it ; but that which stands above 
all spontaneity and watches over and controls it. 
In adding the Will we find the man ; we constitute 



228 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

the Personality. Not that Will constitutes the 
person, or is more essential to it than Rationality, 
but that we do not get the person till we have In- 
tellect, Sensibility, and Will combined. Then we 
have a Person. We then reach a responsible 
cause that can intelligently choose between dif- 
ferent results, and can cause those results to be 
as it chooses. We reach therefore the region of 
character, of obligation, of right and wrong, of 
sanctities, of the possibility of worship, and of 
eternal life. 

But it is one thing to constitute the mind in its 
Personality, and another to furnish it. We saw 
that by the addition of the Sensibility new mate- 
rial was furnished for the Intellect, and so it is 
here. By the addition of the Will new material 
is furnished both for the Intellect and the Sensi- 
bility. It is, indeed, in this way that we have 
the highest and richest materials for both. These 
materials, though we are in the region of freedom, 
are given by necessity. They are the phenomena 
that must be in consequence of the addition of 
Will, and we proceed to inquire what they are. 

You will remember that when we represented 
the Intellect by a single line we had certain things 
presented in front, and then certain ideas which 
originated from the Intellect by necessity, and 
were thus the common inheritance of the race, 
such as time, space, etc., were thrown back of the 



PERSONALITY. 229 

line. In the same way when we had the In- 
tellect united with the Sensibility we had certain 
products thrown back which belong to all alike. 
In respect to whatever is in front of the one line> 
or the two lines, men differ indefinitely ; but in 
respect to what is back of them they are alike. 
And so it is here. When the three, Intellect, 
Sensibility, and Will, act together we shall have 
certain products, call them ideas, or feelings, as 
you please, that will be necessitated, and so, com- 
mon to all. What are these products ? This is 
a question of much interest. 

The first product, and one conditional for all 
others in this department, will, I suppose, be the 
idea of 

PERSONALITY. 

We have constituted the person, and now, as it 
belongs to the Intellect to know itself as Intel- 
lect, and to the Sensibility to reveal itself as Sen- 
sibility, so it belongs to the very constitution of 
a person that he should know his own Personality. 
And just as the notion of being connects itself, 
and becomes interfused with, everything that fol- 
lows it, and as the notion of a good connects itself 
with everything that follows after we introduce 
a Sensibility, so the notion of Personality will go 
forward and upward and connect itself with every- 
thing that shall follow. Though taking up into 
itself bo many elements, and thus complex in its 



280 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

origin, this idea of Personality presents itself as 
one thing. It is one, and it is recognized, and its 
power is felt by every one, whether he has ever 
heard of metaphysics or not. In the days of slav- 
ery the question was whether you might sell a man. 
We said a man was not a thing, he was a person, 
and everybody knew there was a fundamental dif- 
ference between the two. 

It is, in my judgment, here, and next, that we 
have the idea of power, and so of 

CAUSATION. 

Causation implies antecedence, and the uniform 
antecedence of the cause as related to the effect. 
This antecedence is perceived by the Intellect, and 
is supposed by Positivists to be all that we know 
of causation. We suppose, however, that antece- 
dence is merely incidental, a necessary relation 
certainly, but not involving the essence of causa- 
tion. We are causes. We exert force. We put 
forth energy. We know ourselves as doing this. 
We thus gain the idea of force and of causation, 
and by necessity connect these with all perception 
of change, whether physical or mental. We thus 
have the original and necessary idea of cause, as 
involving, not merely antecedence, but force ; and 
the axiom which connects itself with it is, that 
whatever begins to be must have a cause. 

What is the next idea ? I suppose it to be one 
of which I have already spoken, that of 



FREEDOM. 231 



FKEEDOM. 

There is no personality where there is no free- 
dom ; and without the idea of freedom there is no 
possible conception of a will with any apprehen- 
sion of what a will is. As we have seen, this 
idea of freedom belongs to that element of the 
will which we have called choice, or the power of 
choice. In that is the freedom, known as such at 
once or not known at all, given as a simple in- 
eradicable element of our conscious life. Let the 
opportunity, or, it may be, the necessity, — for, 
paradoxical as it may seem, man is under the ne- 
cessity of acting freely, — let the opportunity or 
the necessity of choice between two different 
kinds of good be presented, and the idea of free- 
dom at once and necessarily emerges. Let, for 
instance, a man be required to choose between 
property and integrity, and he knows by neces- 
sity, and with a conviction which nothing can 
strengthen, and which nothing can shake, that he 
is free to choose either. The discussions about 
the freedom of the will have been endless, but 
nothing has ever shaken the conviction of the race 
in regard to the elementary idea of freedom as in- 
volved in choice. Practically this idea of freedom 
is at the basis of all obligation, and of all respon- 
sibility, neither of which can be conceived of with- 
out it. 

After causation and freedom we have the two 



232 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

fundamental and correlative ideas of Rights and 
Obligation. Of these, Obligation has been placed 
first in former editions both in the text and on the 
chart. I now think that Rights should be placed 
first, and that they should be brought together. 
The change is accordingly made. 

RIGHTS. 

This is a separate, independent, and original 
idea, and is founded on good. In connection with 
our own good we have a right to things ; and in 
connection with the good of others we have rights 
over them. 

When a man has procured by his labor an ob 
ject of one of the natural desires and another 
would take it from him, the idea of a Right is im- 
mediately and necessarily given. Its relation to 
Obligation is that obligation is its correlative. If 
a man has a right to anything, others are under 
obligation not to interfere with that right. In this 
way every natural principle of action has its cor- 
responding right, and its reciprocal obligation. 

Again, from relations independent of our will, 
the good of some beings can be secured only by 
the power, and care, and guidance of others. This 
gives the right of authority on the one part, with 
the corresponding obligation of obedience on the 
other. There is also an obligation on the part of 
the superior, first, to exercise authority ; and sec- 
ond, to exercise it within the limits required by 



OBLIGATION. 233 

the good of those governed, regarded both as indi- 
viduals and as a community. 

Having, then, a Person, who is a cause, and a 
free cause, the next idea will be that of 

OBLIGATION. 

Here, as in good and in beauty, we have a sin- 
gle product resulting from the action of more 
than one power. Obligation is, in the first in- 
stance, obligation to choose, and, whether regarded 
as an idea, or a feeling, or both, is conditioned on 
the presentation, through both the Intellect and 
the Sensibility, of two objects of choice, generally 
different kinds of good, between which we aro 
necessitated to choose. 1 

This necessity of choice we are to notice. I 
have before spoken of the necessity of thought. 
We may think of one thing and not of another, 
but think we must. And so it is here. We may 
choose one thing and not another, but choose we 
must. A continual state of choice is as much a 
condition of our lives, at least in our waking 
hours, as continual thought. Is it said that of 
two objects presented we may choose neither? 
True, but the refusal to choose is itself an act of 
choice. It is the preference of something else as 
more desirable than either. Besides, in most 
oases, the conditions of xife are such that an alter- 
native is unavoidable. We must either eat, or go 
1 See Appendix. 



234 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

hungry. We must study, or remain ignorant. 
We n-ust labor, or fail to enjoy the fruit of labor. 

This being understood, it is to be observed that 
the necessity of obligation is as absolute as the 
necessity of choice. Obligation is a moral phe- 
nomenon, and the spontaneous presence of it on 
given conditions is a revelation of the moral nat- 
ure, as the spontaneous presence of thought on 
given conditions is a revelation of the intellectual 
nature ; for wherever there is a necessary result on 
given conditions there is a nature, and that nature 
can be known and judged of only by such result. 

We have, then, the necessity of choice of some 
kind always present ; and the necessity of obliga- 
tion on certain conditions. What are those con- 
ditions ? As has been said, they are the presen- 
tation of two or more objects of choice that differ 
in the quantity or the quality of the good sup- 
posed to be in them, and that can be either gained 
for ourselves, or conferred upon others. Let us 
suppose then that a choice is to be made between 
two forms of good as presented in two different 
objects or ends, and that one of them is seen to be 
higher in kind and more valuable than the other. 
I ask whether it is conceivable that a man with 
faculties unperverted should not feel under obli- 
gation to choose the higher and more valuable. I 
think not. If a sense of obligation would not arise 
of necessity the man could not have a moral na« 
ture. It is the necessity and certainty of a thing 



GOOD AS A MOTIVE. 235 

under its conditions that make it to be a nature. 
The man is under no necessity of choosing the 
" better part," but would be under a necessity of 
feeling obligation to choose it, and of choosing be- 
tween it and that which was less valuable. In all 
rational action a sense of obligation to choose the 
higher good accompanies the apprehension of that 
good, and there can neither be choice, nor a sense 
of obligation to choose, without an apprehension, 
direct or implied, of good in the object or act to 
be chosen. That which has no good in it, and 
is known to have none, cannot be an object of 
choice. 

We have then, both Good and Obligation, as 
motives to choice. What is their nature and rela- 
tive influence ? 

Good is fundamental. Known directly or im 
plicitly, it is, as has just been said, the condition 
of obligation, and is the ultimate reason for choice. 
It stands before the mind as a reason and is chosen 
for its own sake. It is ultimate. Something ulti- 
mate we must have, or there would be lio end in 
going back for objects of pursuit, and this we find 
in Good known as such in soma form of the Sensi- 
bility, — known as having value in itself. It is 
the apprehension of this as an element underlying, 
interfused, or standing in front, and as having 
value in itself, that makes conduct rational as dis- 
tinguished from impulsive. There is great- beauty 
in the mechanism of impulses as driving the being 



236 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

on to its good with no comprehension of the mech- 
anism on its part, and, with no apprehension of 
the good to be reached ; but it is another order of 
things when all there is of mechanism and impulse 
is comprehended, and when the good stands in 
front, or is in any way apprehended as a reason 
for choice, and when, in order to be attained, it 
must be rationally chosen. Then, and then only, 
3an we have a philosophy of conduct. 

Such being the part performed by Good as a 
motive, what is that performed by Obligation? 
This is peculiar. Being a primitive manifesta- 
tion of the moral nature, it stands by itself as 
much as thought does. As from the Intellect, ob- 
ligation is rational ; as from the Sensibility, it is 
emotive. It has, therefore, in it an element both 
of reason and of impulse, and so is capable of be- 
coming, and does become, an authoritative impulse. 
But an authoritative impulse is law, and so far as 
we can see, is the only possible form in which there 
can so be a law within the constitution that a man 
shall become a law unto himself. As authorita- 
tive, law must be both promissory and minatory, 
tor anything claiming to be a law without a sanc- 
tion express or implied would be no law. But if 
promissory and minatory, then of what ? It must 
be of some good on the one hand, or evil on the 
other, that may be realized in the Sensibility. 

Thus do we find the deep harmony there is be- 
tween good and obligation acting as motives. Not 



OBLIGATION IN TWO WAYS. 237 

only is good the condition of obligation, since obli* 
gation arises on the apprehension of it, and re- 
quires it for its sanction, but they are conspiring 
forces. In a normal state the free choice would 
always be of that good for its own sake towards 
which the impulse that is in obligation would 
tend, and so we may see how, instead of a bond- 
age, all service under the law of righteousness may 
become perfect freedom. Nor, in speaking of the 
harmony of good and obligation as motives, may 
we omit to mention the new and high source of 
good opened to us in the sensibilities from the 
moral nature which are revealed in connection 
with the sense of obligation and its results. This 
good reveals itself as a motive from the first, and 
before acting, in the way of promise ; and imme- 
diately on acting in accordance with the sense of 
obligation, which becomes conscience when our 
own actions are concerned, it becomes a song that 
accompanies us through our pilgrimage so long as 
the impulse there is in obligation is heeded. 

When a greater and higher good as compared 
with a lower is presented, perhaps all will agree 
that we must feel obligation to choose the higher ; 
but are there not acts and courses of conduct in 
view of which obligation arises when there is no 
distinct apprehension of good, and none at all ex- 
cept as it comes in the promise implied in the 
sense of obligation itself ? I think there are. If 
there were not there would not be that adaptation 



238 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

of man to his position that we find everywhere 
else. In early life, and often subsequently, all are 
so placed as to be unable to apprehend intellectu- 
ally the proper grounds of conduct, and therefore 
we might expect that the moral nature, as sensi- 
tive, would have a feeling of obligation analogous 
to instinct in animals, and directive for man in 
reference to his highest good. Such a feeling 
there is, but it is merely impulsive, and can never 
be the ground of a philosophy. It can never be 
the basis of a system of comprehension by which 
man knows himself to act intelligently with refer- 
ence to all the impulses of his nature. Always 
instinct tends to the highest good. It has its basis 
in the intelligent recognition by Him who gave it, 
of the highest good of the animal, while there is no 
conscious recognition of that good by the animal 
itself. And so it is here. The impulse may be 
rationally accepted as the ground of conduct, but 
so far as there is any ground for the comprehen- 
sion of the conduct as rational, or for any philoso- 
phy, it must be found in the underlying idea of 
good. When legitimate, this impulse of obligation 
binds us by its very nature ; but as an impulse, it 
is to be rationally tested like all others ; especially 
Bince men have often believed themselves impelled 
by it to perform the most wicked acts. 

It is in the two ways just named that I think 
obligation arises ; but what of the idea of right, does 
not that belong here? You will observe that I 



THE IDEA OF RIGHT. 239 

have spoken of the obligation to choose, and the 
obligation to act. Between these, I make a dis- 
tinction corresponding to that between choice and 
solition. Obligation to choose arises immediately 
in view of the higher good, and this act of choice is 
a perfectly simple act. No means are needed. Let 
a higher and a lower good be presented between 
which a man must choose, and he is to choose. 
That is all. It is a simple primitive act, which no 
man can explain, or make more simple, and which 
no man can tell another how to do. In that is 
freedom, inherent, essential. He does it, indeed, 
under the sense of obligation to choose the higher 
good, but there is no compulsion. Here there is no 
need of the idea of right as I use that word, be- 
cause the obligation to choose arises immediately 
from the apprehension of the good itself ; and if we 
have the sense of obligation that is all that we need. 
Practically, the idea of right avails nothing except 
as it is the basis of obligation, and here, in the in- 
cipiency of moral action, we have a basis without 
that. The obligation here is obligation to choose. 
But choice is one thing, and the volition and ex- 
ecutive act by which the choice is carried out is 
another. In choosing there are no means, and no 
possible difference of methods. The simple question 
is, will you choose that which you know yourself 
to be under obligation to choose ; yes or no ? But 
in volition, in acting, in seeking to carry out the 
choice, and realize the end, means must come in, 



240 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

and there is room for a difference of means and of 
methods. 

This brings us to choices of a different order ; 
the choice, not of ends, but of means and cf meth- 
ods ; and here comes in the idea of right and of 
obligation as connected with that. Of two courses 
of action equally compatible with the rights of oth- 
ers, one, it may be, will more effectively secure 
that good sought than the other. Such a course 
will be right, and there will immediately arise a 
sense of obligation to pursue it. As I understand 
it, right always carries with it a sense of obligation. 
They go together. The idea of right does not 
come in originally as the foundation of the obliga- 
tion to choose, but obligation to act in a given way 
arises immediately from an apprehension of the 
Tightness of the act, that is to say, from its ten- 
dency to accomplish the end. Still there would be 
no obligation but for the relation of the Tightness 
to some good. If there were no relation of the 
right act to some good, there would be nothing 
either right or wrong. Anything moral or im- 
moral would be impossible. It will be seen, there- 
fore, that I derive the whole moral value of right 
from obligation as primitive, whereas others de- 
rive the whole force of obligation from the idea of 
right. We can, they say, be under no obligation 
to do anything except what is right, and because 
it is right. To this, I agree so far as obligation to 
act outwardly is concerned, but I also say that we 



RIGHT. 241 

are never under obligation to do an act as morally 
right, for which there is not a reason in some good 
besides its being right, and on account of which it 
is right. 

It may seem trivial, but having illustrated other 
points on the board, let me attempt this. A boy 
is sent to school from the point A. The school- 
house is at B. At the point C, he meets a boy 
who asks him to go with him to the point D and 
steal some pears. Here we have room for motives 
that are higher and lower, that may decide the 
question irrespective of obligation. On the one 
hand the boy may love study. He may wish to 
please his teacher, or his father, or may fear pun- 
ishment. On the other hand is appetite and the 




love of truancy. The alternative would be be- 
tween taking the road to B or D. He would not 
think of going on in a straight line to some indefi- 
nite point, E, for the sake of going in a straight 
line ; but if a sense of obligation should come in at 
all, it would be to prompt him to yield to motives 



242 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

intrinsically the strongest, and thus to attain 
a good congruous to the higher part of his nature. 
If there is no good proposed either for ourselves at 
for any one else, the act cannot be right. 

This point I stated, and in the above terms, in 
the lectures that I gave here four years since, and 
it was especially this that was controverted by Dr. 
McOosh in the correspondence that afterwards 
took place, and that has been controverted by oth- 
ers. I have now made it as distinct as I can, and 
leave you to judge. 

But what is the idea of right which is held by 
those who object to that now presented ? You 
will see that I regard right as the quality of action, 
but they generally present it as an idea of the pure 
intellect, and that belongs in our scheme, with 
those of time and space. Hence they say it is 
something that is eternal and immutable, and to 
which God himself is subject. Others see that the 
foundation of morals cannot be in the pure intel- 
lect, since anything originating wholly there can- 
not be a motive, and they say that there is no such 
thing as right or wrong except in connection with 
the Sensibility and the Will. That of course puts 
it out of all relation to those necessary ideas ; and 
yet, they say that there is no authority of obliga- 
tion, unless it be based on right. It is indeed possi- 
ble, since choice is moral action, to carry the word 
right, up into the region of choice as distinguished 
from action, and to say of the choice of a higher 



RIGHTS. 243 

good made under a sense of obligation, that it is a 
right choice, or that it is right to choose the higher 
good ; but here again it is right with reference to 
the good chosen, and can have moral quality only 
from the primary obligation based on that. Obli- 
gation thus springing as one indivisible product 
from the action of our whole nature, has no need of 
anything beyond itself to give it authority. It 
is the voice of our moral nature speaking to us, 
and is its own authority. 

We say then on this whole subject — 1st. That 
good is valuable in itself. 2d. That it is, and there^ 
fore, a proper motive of choice and of action. 3d. 
That when a choice must be made between a 
higher and a lower good, obligation is necessa- 
rily affirmed to choose the higher. 4th. That 
between choosing in accordance with obligation 
thus affirmed, and ultimate good, there is a sure 
connection. To doubt this would be atheism, or 
worse. And 5th. That there can be no harm in 
knowing these facts, and that it will not lower the 
tone of action to act in view of them, as well as 
in accordance with them. 

With the idea of obligation, formed as has been 
stated, the moral being is constituted ; he becomes 
capable of a moral act ; that is a free act. It 
is an act of preference or choice, for where there 
is no preference or choice there is no morality. 
The idea of obligation is conditioned on that of a 
free will, but is not its product. It comes of ne- 
cessity before choice; and choice made either in 



244 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

conformity with it, or in opposition to it, is a 
moral act. But such acts, of one kind and the 
other, cannot be without the formation of the 
ideas of — 

MERIT AND DEMEROL*. 

These are virtually contained in the idea of ob- 
ligation, but cannot be fully realized till after the 
act. I mention them here because these ideas of 
obligation and of merit and of demerit, belong to a 
moral being as such. They would belong to him 
as existing and acting alone. Moral law is incon 
ceivable without them. 

From the ideas of Rights and of Obligation two 
others must arise. The first is that of 

RESPONSIBILITY. 

We can be responsible to no one who has not some 
authority over us. The authority must be a 
righteous authority, that is, an authority founded 
on a right ; and to any one who has such authority 
we are responsible. Obligation is not the same as 
Responsibility. We may be under obligation to 
aid a poor man, but are not responsible to him. 
In no proper sense can God be said to be respon- 
si ble to any one. " He giveth not account of 
any of his matters." 

The second idea is that of 

PUNISHMENT. 

This arises necessarily on the violation of right- 
eous authority. But here a distinction is to be 



PUNISHMENT. 245 

made, and is greatly needed, to which our language 
is not fully accommodated. It is that between 
the evil that comes from the act itself with no in- 
tervention of the will of another, as in remorse, 
or through natural law, and that which is in- 
flicted by another for the purpose of sustaining 
righteous authority. We need a word which shall 
always imply a guilty disregard of authority, and 
the infliction of evil by the person in whom the 
authority resides for the purpose of maintaining 
that authority. This distinction is partially rec- 
ognized in the different uses made of the words 
penalty and punishment ; penalty often implying 
evil irrespective of guilt, or of the will of another ; 
whereas punishment uniformly implies guilt, and 
generally evil inflicted by another. When we 
act in view of penalty as distinguished from pun- 
ishment, we act under moral law, can be governed 
only by reason, and may have a philosophy. When 
we act in view of punishment as distinguished from 
penalty, we act under positive law ; can be gov- 
erned rationally only through faith ; and can have 
no philosophy. Obedience must be implicit. It 
may be rational through faith, but ag obedience, 
it does not admit of philosophy. Philosophy 
may show that the thing commanded is righteous, 
or in accordance with rights, but this is not sup 
posed to be seen by him to whom the command 
is addressed, or if it be, the additional motive in- 
volved in the command may be needed. 



246 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

What next ? There are those, and their num- 
ber is increasing, who say that the idea of God is 
given in the same way as those we have been con- 
sidering. To decide this we must know what they 
who say this would include in the idea of God. 
Would they include the idea of an Infinite Per- 
sonal Being possessed of moral attributes ? With- 
out this the idea of God is not worth contending 
for. But if they would include this, I do not think 
that the idea is thus given. If so no man could be 
an atheist. On this point, however, I would not 
be confident. 

We have now found the ideas which would be 
necessitated by the addition of a rational and free 
Will to the Intellect and the Sensibility. What 
shall we call the power by which these ideas are 
given ? They are given in the same way as the 
necessary ideas from the Intellect alone, which we 
have attributed to the Reason ; and as those from 
the Intellect and Sensibility, which we have attrib- 
uted to the jJEsthetic, or Affective Reason. Evi- 
dently the power here is of the same general na- 
ture, and I suppose it to be what Kant called 

THE MORAL, OR PRACTICAL REASON. 

ff we call it the Practical Reason, we indicate aU 
the functions of the power, especially that charac- 
teristic of its products which makes them both 
rational and emotive. If we call it The Moral 



TABULAR RESULTS. 



247 



Reason, we name it, as in the case of the ^Esthetic 
Reason, from only a single one, though the princi- 
pal one of its functions. 

It only remains to place before you in a single 
view the results we have reached in this lecture. 1 





r^ 


' > 


| s 1 a 


/ PUNISHMENT, 






* H S H 


j Responsibility, 






o § g 5 

u & A . 


S \ DEMERIT. 
g J MERIT, 

g / Obligation, j 

§ | RIGHTS, S 

DC 1 * 

§ 1 Causation, 




O 

3 


INTELL] 
ITY BRO 
HOICE A 
: ACTION 




si 


7 THE 
NSIBIL 
S OF C 
»R TH] 


1 FREEDOM, 


OQ 




s a g s 


\ Personality. 






DUCTS 
' THE 
OBJE 
TIONS 
LL. 


Products, 






S 5 3 S £ 


Practical or moral Reason. 






s 



INTELLECT, SENSIBILITY, AND WILL 
1 See Appendix C. 



LECTURE XI. 

BODY ; SOUL ; SPIRIT. — SPONTANEITY ; FREE- 
DOM. — THE NATUKAL ; SUPERNATURAL ; MI- 
RACULOUS. — CONDUCT ; OBLIGATION ; A SU- 
PREME END ; CHARACTER. — THE HIGHEST 
GOOD ; THE WHOLE GOOD ; THE LAW OF LIMI- 
TATION. 

We have now constituted the Person. In doing 
this we have found that those necessary ideas or 
products which are common to the race, and which 
are regulative, are of three kinds. The first and 
lowest are those of the pure Intellect. The second 
are those of the Intellect combined with the Sensi- 
bility ; and the third are those of the Intellect and 
Sensibility in combination with a rational Will. 

And as these three products have a different 
origin, so they have different characteristics and 
perform different offices. They are alike as neces- 
sitated, and common to all, and regulative ; but 
they contain different elements, and regulate differ- 
ent departments. By the addition of the Sensibil- 
ity to the Intellect we have a new department for 
the Intellect. The Intellect gives us light simply ; 
what has sometimes been called a " dry light." 
With the Sensibility added, we have light and 



REGULATIVE IDEAS : THREE CLASSES. 249 

warmth blended, and a field for the Intellect that 
covers the whole range of possible combinations of 
intellect and feeling where no conscious will or 
purpose is involved. With the Will added we have 
not only light and warmth, but the chemical rays, 
The action of Will not only opens new fields to the 
Intellect, but gives new materials and forms to 
the Sensibility. It is here, and here only, that we 
find anything of a moral character. 

From what has now been said it will be seen 
that we have three departments of study in ac- 
cordance with the three classes of regulative ideas. 
We have the department of pure thought; the 
department of animal wants and desires, and affec- 
tions, and of beauty ; and the department of mor- 
als ; and we see that these departments must become 
more complex and difficult as we go up. We may 
Bee too, one great source of the disagreement of 
those who have labored in the higher departments. 
It has been because they have not sufficiently ap- 
prehended the essential differences between the 
regulative ideas in the different departments, for 
these are scarcely more distinguished by their sub- 
jects than by the regulative ideas that underlie 
them. With these differences in view it does not 
seem possible that an attempt would have been 
made to found the science of morals on an idea 
having a similar origin with that of space. 

In thus reaching a person, we make, as has been 
said, a great transition. We reach the highest 



250 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

possible point ; we reach an intelligent, free, moral 
cause. We reach a cause. Here is a being capa- 
ble of interposing his own free choice and his 
power of volition, and thus purposely causing that 
to be, which, but for him, would not have been. 
Herein, as respects freedom and power, he is in 
the image of God. Now we have, as we had not 
before, a being capable of character, of being 
loved, respected, venerated, rewarded ; capable also 
of being despised, contemned, abhorred, punished. 
You may discipline an animal, you may train him, 
but in no proper sense can he be said to have guili, 
and therefore he cannot be punished. 

In reaching personality after the method we 
have followed, we find below that, three forms of 
necessitated activity. The first is that of exter- 
nal nature, with which we have, at present, noth- 
ing to do. The second is that by which the bod- 
ily functions are carried on. It comprises all the 
movements within that part of our scheme which 
was presented under the head of Physiology, 
which are attributed to life, and seem automatic 
or spontaneous. The third comprises all the men- 
tal movements, intellectual and affective, up to 
the point of choice. There is also, as we shall 
see, a fourth region of necessity, comprising the 
results subsequent to choice and consequent upon 
it. Of these regions of necessity, three pertain to 
us in such a way as to give us three different na- 



THE BODY. 251 

fcures, for, as I use the term, wherever we have a 
uniform necessity that can be distinguished from 
all others, we have a nature. 

We have then first, the physical nature, or the 
body. It is a living organized body, and, the con- 
ditions being given, the processes within it by which 
it is built up and sustained, as of digestion, circu- 
lation, and secretion, go on by a movement as spon- 
taneous, as necessary, as little connected with our 
choice or volition, as the processes within the vege- 
table. These processes are, indeed, carried on by 
that organic life that is common to the vegetable and 
the animal, and the necessity which controls them 
may be called an organic necessity, as that which 
controls mere matter may be called a physical ne- 
cessity. The body, then, will not consist merely of 
the matter of which it may be composed at any 
given moment, and which is constantly changing, 
but of that in connection with the organific power, 
that has been in it from the first, has wrought its 
changes, has caused it to be such a body rather than 
another, and given it its identity, so that we say 
we have the same body, while not a particle of the 
same matter remains. How far this individual- 
ized force may be preserved in its identity when 
it is separated from the matter of the body so that 
it may again reappear, perhaps, according to the 
doctrine of the correlation of forces, under some 
other form, it is not for us to say. Certainly it is 
not the least marvelous feature of our present 



252 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

state that there are types that are constantly pre- 
served, whife yet having such a wonderful variety 
under them. And as the types are preserved, so 
there is no absurdity in supposing that in some 
way unknown to us, each individual force, that 
which is really the body, may be preserved. The 
preservation of the type by generation after its 
kind seems natural because we are accustomed to 
it, but is really as mysterious as would be the con- 
tinuity of the individual force. At any rate we 
have here a separate, necessitated form of move- 
ment, that builds up and maintains organization, 
and we call the force thus building, together with 
the resulting organization, the Body. 

Then we have the mental necessity that deter- 
mines the movements of the mind up to the point 
of choice. We do not think, we did not originaDy, 
from will. If we had not thought first by a 
necessity of our nature, and because we wt^re cre- 
ated thinking beings, we could never have known 
that we had the power to think. The power is 
necessitated, the direction is from will. Of this 
involuntary movement of the mind whose products 
are offered to us to be accepted or rejected, I have 
already spoken. Left to itself it is a movement 
according to a necessary law, thus implying a na- 
ture. The laws of logic are as necessary, to say 
the least, as that of gravitation. So. also, in the 
laws of the Sensibility, when the conditions are 
given; and in the various combinations of Intellect 



THE SPIRIT. 253 

and feeling, including animal wants and passions. 
The force which produces these necessitated move- 
ments, is other than that which builds up the physi- 
cal organization. With modifications it is com- 
mon to all sensitive and perceptive life, to the ani- 
mals as well as to us, and, though the word has 
often a different and higher meaning, may be called 
the Soul. 

There remains that which I have represented as 
standing above the products of this necessity and 
choosing and refusing, and as exerting in various 
ways an indirect control over the products them- 
selves. This again is a force other than either of 
those below it. So far as it is free, that is, as it 
chooses with an alternative different in kind, and 
as it is intelligently, causative, it is not a nature. 
It is another order of being. It is Spirit. The 
functions of Spirit are two. They are first, Free- 
dom of choice, and second, Causation. By free- 
dom we mean the power and the opportunity of 
choice by a rational being with an alternative in 
kind. This idea of freedom so inheres in such a 
power that the power is inconceivable without it. 
By causation we mean nothing secondary. We 
mean the origination both of choice and of motion. 
If man is not a true cause he cannot be responsi- 
ble. In these man has not a nature, but is super- 
natural. But subsequent to choice there is neces- 
sity, and so a nature ; and this necessity is as 
absolute, at least for us, as any other. A man 



254 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

may choose whether he will steal or not, but if he 
steal there will be a necessary reaction on his own 
spirit that will render it different in spite of will, 
from what it would have been. Remorse and 
shame will come by necessity after choice, when, 
by a similar necessity, there might have been a 
virtuous self-complacency, and hope and joy. 

The necessity of which I have just spoken is 
one part of the moral nature, for it will be seen 
that, as related to the spirit, the moral nature is 
double. It consists in the necessity which gives us 
the idea of obligation before choosing ; and also in 
that which gives us the results just mentioned that 
follow choice, and action from it. If we were not 
under the necessity of feeling obligation, we should 
not have a moral nature; and if there were not 
necessary results as we act in accordance with, or in 
opposition to obligation, that nature would be nuga- 
tory We should not be a law unto ourselves. It 
is to be observed, however, that while obligation 
precedes the action of spirit as moral, yet that the 
idea of it is conditioned on the existence of Spirit, 
and the possibility of its acting, as the idea of re- 
morse is conditioned on its having acted in a par- 
ticular way. We have thus here also the circle 
that we find in all life, for in every living thing 
all that is essential to the whole is implied in the 
action of every part. 

We find then, in working our way up, a clear 
distinction between the action of Spirit as free and 



SPONTANEITY AND FREEDOM. 255 

causative, and all necessity of nature. We also 
find three departments of force clearly distin- 
guishable from each other, and suppose that the 
Apostle Paul was justified as a philosopher in 
calling them Body, Soul, and Spirit. Certainly 
man is more complex in his unity than any other 
being on the earth ; perhaps more so than any 
other being in the universe, unless it be God him- 
self ; certainly there are in him the three distin- 
guishable and separable forms of activity mentioned 
— separable because actually separated in the veg- 
etable and the animal, and each fairly referable to 
a distinct force ; and for each of these we need a 
name. To the names given there are objections ; 
and especially to the term " soul," as having often, 
in our times, a broader meaning ; but I suppose this 
distinction is indicated by the Apostle in his use of 
these terms, and it is, perhaps, as well as we can do. 

Having now reached the point of freedom, and 
having spoken of spontaneous movement in con- 
nection with that, I will call your attention to the 
difference between them. As related to our wills, 
a spontaneous movement is as necessary as any 
other. It differs from other necessitated move- 
ment in springing from within that which is 
moved, and so simulates freedom. As apparently 
without effort it is pleasing, and as from a con- 
cealed cause it is mysterious, but that it is the op- 
posite of the will and of action from that is clear 



256 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

because it is the spontaneous movements that the 
will is to oppose and rule over. Sudden anger is 
spontaneous ; so are the Appetites, the Impulses, 
and the Passions generally, and these are to be 
controlled by the Will. In that is choice, and also 
purpose, which is generic choice. These are 
made, or should be, in the light of the Intellect, 
in view of reasons standing before, as well as from 
impulsions, and in these alone is there freedom. 
Spontaneity and freedom are therefore entirely 
different things. This I speak of with some 
emphasis because the two have often been con- 
founded, and sometimes by eminent writers. 

The point of freedom which we have now 
reached is the point of Dominion. Of this I have 
before spoken as a characteristic of man. Domin- 
ion implies intelligent freedom, because that which 
is dominated over, or determined by anything 
else, cannot have dominion. This prerogative of 
freedom is one of the original and simple forms 
in which our nature manifests itself, and so admits 
of no explanation. It must be known directly by 
and in itself, or it cannot be known at all. In 
this way all men do know it. The power of 
choice and so the idea of freedom, enters into their 
conception of themselves in the same way that the 
power of thinking does. We can choose as we 
please. Here our power is direct, and nothing 
that does not destroy our very being can take it 



CHOICE AND VOLITION. 257 

from us, or prevent our using it. In outwaid acta 
we use means. We need at least the use of our 
limbs and organs of expression. But in choosing, 
the act is simple. We use no means, and no one 
can teach us how to do it. There is no how to it, for 
a how always implies the use of means. Hence, as 
independent of external force, and of means, which 
may, or may not be in our power ; as the origin of 
all outward manifestation of what is properly the 
person, and as rendering character possible, the 
Will as choice is the ultimate seat of responsibility, 
and an essential element of personality. 

This direct power over our own choices by 
which we become capable of dominion, ought to 
be distinguished more carefully than it has been 
from that secondary power of volition which is 
put forth only in the use of means. Choice may 
be without volition, and expresses character as 
fully as if volition followed. Hence it is that God 
looks upon the heart. 

But volition without choice is impossible, and 
when it is put forth may be nugatory. It has 
no moral character, and its value depends on that 
contingent power through which we control our 
bodies and the agencies around us. It is through 
this that we control indirectly the involuntary 
processes within us, both physical and mental, and 
also the processes of nature around us. Choosing 
first, and then controlling these with reference to 
ends, we have dominion. 

17 



258 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

And here I think we are at a point where we 
may see the difference between what is natural 
and what is supernatural. Nature is the region 
of necessity. Left to themselves the processes 
around us go on with absolute uniformity. So 
the rivers run, so the stars move. But that 
which is free, and has dominion over nature, is 
super natural. It is above nature. It is in an- 
other region and is controlled by other principles 
altogether. There are those who say that every- 
thing out of God is nature, but this has been unfor- 
tunate as confounding things that differ, as favor- 
ing necessity, and tending to degrade man. I 
would say that everything that is not God, and 
that is not made in the image of God, is nature. 
If that which is in God be not nature, if it be 
supernatural, why should we call that in us by 
which we are in the image of God, nature ? If 
there be, as is conceded, that in the kind of pow- 
ers with which we are endowed in virtue of which 
we are in the image of God, and exercise domin- 
ion over nature, then we must be, so far forth, 
supernatural. And here I suppose we find the true 
line between nature and the supernatural. All 
spirit and spiritual activity, whether it be morally 
good or evil, is supernatural. All free causation is 
supernatural. 

There is another point that may be referred to 
in connection with the power of Will. It is the 



MIEACLES. 259 

difference between the supernatural and the mi- 
raculous. Much is said at present in regard to 
miracles, and men seem to me to fall into dif- 
ficulties about them of their own making. Did 
you ever see a man riding in his own dust ? In 
California, where they have no rain for three 
months and the wind blows steadily in one direc- 
tion, a man may ride thus all day with everything 
obscured around and above him, while, to one who 
stands apart, the atmosphere is wonderfully trans- 
parent. We have speculative men much in that 
condition. On many points, and this of miracles 
is one, they raise a fog about their own heads 
and suppose it extends through the universe. 
They talk about miracles as a violation of the 
laws of nature. A miracle is no violation of any 
law of nature. It presupposes laws of nature, and 
is simply an act performed directly by the will of 
God that transcends those laws. That the will 
of God should cause iron to rise and swim in tho 
water, is no more a violation of the law of gravita- 
tion than it is for me to raise this rod which goes 
up directly or indirectly by the superior force of 
Will acting at some point immediately upon mat- 
ter. The law of gravitation continues to act, but 
the rod rises by a spiritual force that transcends 
it, that force acting freely, intelligently, and with 
dominion. Such an event, so far as it is produced 
by an agency that is spiritual and free, is supernat- 
ural, but not miraculous. In a miracle the will of 



260 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

God acts directly, and produces outward effects 
with no intervening agency. This our wills can- 
not do. Hence a miracle is the great seal of God 
to any communication from Himself, and, so fai 
as we can see, not the only possible evidence, far 
from it, but the only possible seal. There is in it, 
as there is in our control over nature, the agency 
of an intelligent Will exercising dominion. This 
is the important element, and the only important 
element in both cases. The one is no more 
Btrange than the other ; there is in it no more any 
violation of a law of nature, but the mode is such 
as to show that it can be done by God only. 
What difficulty then is there here ? I see none, 
unless we deny the power of God to act directly 
on matter, and to do that would be a practical 
denial of his existence. 

We have now seen how personality is consti- 
tuted, and what are its prerogatives; and we 
have fully furnished the mind up to the point of 
responsible action, giving it its three classes of 
regulative ideas, together with all that comes con- 
tingently by direct presentation. Some, indeed, 
may think we have gone beyond that, for in the 
list I gave you at the close of the last lecture the 
ideas of merit and demerit, and of reward and 
punishment, were put down, and they may be 
thought of as solely the result of moral action. In a 
sense they are, but they are so implied in the very 



CONDUCT AND CHARACTER. 261 

conception of a moral nature, are so inherent and 
essential that they may be said to be given with 
the nature itself. 

Having reached the person, as we now have, 
and thus a proper cause, we have reached the 
highest point. There is nothing higher in kind 
than a personal cause. God is such a cause. 
Henceforth there will be no more upbuilding by 
the addition of conditioning and conditioned fac- 
ulties. We now enter another region. We pass 
from the tree to its fruit, from the philosophy of 
man to that of conduct, from the upbuilding of 
the person to the formation and upbuilding of such 
a character as a person thus constituted ought to 
form and build up. 

But moral and responsible action, to which we 
now come, is action from choice, or rather, it is 
the choice itself. A being with no power of choice 
can be neither moral nor responsible, and when 
the choice is made the moral character of the act 
and of all that pertains to it is determined. 
Choice implies an object that may be chosen, and 
also an alternative. This alternative may be be- 
tween two objects of the same kind, or of different 
kinds, or it may be between choosing a single ob- 
ject or not choosing it ; but an alternative of some 
kind there must be. 

Let us then bring up before the person the dif- 
ferent springs or grounds of action which we have 
found in the constitution* and so the different 



262 



AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 



possible objects of choice. To do this let the 
person, now fully constituted, but not' having yet 
acted, be represented by a straight line thus, — 





MORAL LOVE. 




Benevolent. 
Just, 




BENEVOLENCE, OR 




True, 

Righteous, 




FOR COUNTRY. 




Patriotic. 


© 


for Family, 




Amiable 








2 


NATURAL AFFECTIONS, 


AS 




a 


ESTEEM. 






o 


POWER, 

Knowledge, 




ambitious. 




Property, 




COVETOUS. 




Desires, as of 








Appetites. 


)N. 


Sensual. 




1 GROUNDS OF ACTK 


CHARACTER. 



We then bring up, as we have heretofore done, 
the results of our previous work, and place them 
before the person in their order and rank as con- 
ditioning and conditioned. Without going into 
detail we have thus, in kind, every principle of 
action in our constitution, each legitimate and 
desirable in its place. We then place Obligation 
on the other side of the line, written so as to show 
its presence at every point where choice is to be 
made between different principles of action that 
may be contending for the ascendency. 

With this before us we are able to see what 
takes place in responsible action. A choice is to 



OBLIGATION. 263 

be made between a lower principle of action and 
a higher, and the moral nature, when it is dealt 
fairly by, will always affirm obligation to choose 
tfie higher. If the question be between the grati- 
fication of appetite and the practical exercise of 
a benevolent affection, obligation will be affirmed 
to exercise the affection. This affirmation is not 
an act of the will. It is not virtue, or any part 
of it. It is necessitated as being nature, and if 
it were not thus necessitated we should not have 
a moral nature. The sense of obligation thus 
stands by itself in our constitution. We do not 
suppose there is anything like it in that of the 
brute. In that the strongest principle prevails 
with no intervention of any sense or idea of obli- 
gation. If the nature of the brute were repre- 
sented by a straight line, as I have represented 
the person, it would be governed wholly by what 
is in front of it. Nothing would be thrown back. 
With us the proper motives to choice are the 
objects that address the different principles of 
action; or, if you please, those principles them- 
selves prompting us to act in view of the objects. 
The objects present themselves as good; if not 
they would not be motives. The principles of 
action promise us a good if we will permit them 
to act, and, in view of the objects and of the 
affirmation of obligation taken together, we are to 
choose which object we will have, what principle 
of action we will adopt* what end we will pur- 



264 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

sue. The obligation is not an independent mo- 
tive, and becomes possible only as there is such a 
motive presented to the Sensibility as a good, and 
that is higher than some other with which it is in 
conflict. There can no more be an obligation in- 
dependent of some good in a sensibility than there 
can be a right thus independent. 

It will be seen, then, that obligation acts from 
behind as an impulse, and is to a moral being 
what instinct is to an animal, except as any in> 
pulsive power, however high, must be modified by 
the coming in of comprehension and of freedom. 
These come in to comprehend it and the condi- 
tions on which it acts, and to prevent our being 
misled by it as we are liable to be, and as animals 
are, and must be, liable to be misled by their in- 
stincts. The differences between Obligation and 
Instinct are two, one from its connection with 
comprehension, and the other with freedom. By 
comprehension we can understand its office as we 
can that of an ordinary instinct, can find the con- 
ditions on which it acts, can compare it with other 
impulsions which come without comprehension, 
and also with the reasons that stand before us and 
become motives only through the intelligence. It 
is through this power of comprehension that a 
philosophy is possible. Obligation differs in its 
action from instinct, through freedom, because, 
though it claims to be, and was intended to be a 
guide, — a voice behind us saying " this is the 



AUTHORITY AND FREEDOM. 265 

tvay, walk ye in it," — there is yet tnat in the 
personality so above it that it can be rejected. 
The man has the power to set it aside, and not 
only that, but to set aside the reasons that are set 
before him, — all that good with which our whole 
nature leads us to suppose that obligation will 
ultimately coincide, — and to run into folly and 
wickedness. This it is to be a fool, which, as I 
have said before, no brute is capable of being. 
With this impulsion, and power of comprehension, 
and freedom, man can act rationally and morally 
from a sense of obligation alone, with no visible 
reason in front, but with the faith that there is 
one. He can also act rationally and morally in 
view of the good itself without being aware of the 
impulsion or thinking of the obligation ; or he 
may act under the conscious guidance and inspira- 
tion of both. 

At this point it is that we may see how it is 
that obligation as authoritative may be reconciled 
with freedom. Authority is either mandatory 
or permissive. Sometimes the parent says, " thou 
shalt," and perhaps the command is felt as oner- 
ous, though never if filial love be what it should. 
But sometimes the child says, " May I ? " and if 
the parent says, " Yes," he is acting under author- 
ity no less than if the thing were positively com- 
manded. In this way, through filial love when the 
command is positive, and through permission when 
authority and inclination coincide, authority is 



266 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

harmonized with an obedience that is freedom. 
For the most part we act under the guidance oi 
authority as permissive, and, if we are in the right 
path, shall do so more and more. 

Obligation, as has been said, is affirmed when- 
ever there is a conflict of motives as higher and 
lower, but we can never estimate its full force, or 
see how character is formed without referring to 
a distinction I formerly made in this place be- 
tween ends as subordinate, ultimate, and supreme. 
A subordinate end is that which we seek for the 
sake of something else. An ultimate end is that 
which we seek for its own sake as a good in itself. 
A supreme end is an ultimate end made by us 
paramount to all others. Setting now before a 
person the range of motives or ends involved in 
the column I have placed before you, it might be 
supposed that he might act, now with reference 
to one end, and now to another, without making 
any one supreme. And many seem to do this. 
They seem to be controlled, now by this impulse, 
now by that, and to be under the guidance of no 
one principle. We call them frivolous. If, more- 
over, you ask the first man you meet what his 
Bupreme end is, the chances are he will not be 
able to tell you. But men often have such an 
end without stating it to themselves or revealing 
it to others, till they are tested. Here is a man 
with whom power is a supreme end. He is full 
of good impulses, ready to do you a favor, cares 



I 



A SUIBEME END. 267 

nothing for money ; but come between him and 
his power, and that man is a Bonaparte, and 
will sacrifice the lives of five hundred thousand 
men to enable him to take the city of Moscow, 
while professing, and perhaps making himself be- 
lieve, that he is acting for the good of his country, 
And so it is that some ruling passion is constantly 
revealing itself in society in such results, that, if 
they had been foretold, the man himself would 
have said, " What ! is thy servant a dog that he 
should do this thing ? " It does not follow, there- 
fore, because a man cannot state to others, and 
perhaps does not even to himself, what his su- 
preme end is, that he has none. Indeed, it seems 
to belong to the very nature of a moral being that 
he should have such an end, for, as the gradation 
of ends goes on till you come to the highest, Obli- 
gation utters its voice at every step, so that, if, 
at any point lower than the highest, a stand is 
made, the end chosen at that point becomes the 
supreme end ; whereas, if the man goes up, as 
he should, till he reaches the highest end and 
chooses that, then that will be the supreme end. 
It enters therefore into the very conception of 
moral law that there should be a supreme end, 
and that the law should require that that end be 
chosen. ~~ 

We now see how it is that character is formed. 
It is formed by the choice as supreme of some one 
of the ends presented in the column of motives or 



268 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

principles of action, the character being determined 
by the end chosen. He who chooses money as his 
Bupreme end, is a covetous man and " an idolater." 
He who chooses power is ambitious ; and he who 
chooses God and his service is religious. This 
divides characters into two classes. It makes a 
difference to the man himself and to others in 
many ways whether he chooses appetite, or prop- 
erty, or knowledge, or power as his supreme end, 
but in one respect those choosing either are mor- 
ally much alike. They all equally ignore Obliga- 
tion. Whoever is governed by a sense of obliga- 
tion can make no end supreme that is not the 
highest, and he who fails to be governed by a 
sense of obligation must be radically wrong. If 
the proper test of morality be that a man shall be 
governed by his rational and moral nature — and 
what else can it be ? — he is not a moral man. Be- 
tween those who choose their ends and seek them 
with the full purpose of doing it in accordance 
with obligation, and those who either count obli- 
gation out altogether, or only give it its turn with 
other impulses as they may happen to come up, 
there is a radical difference. Every variety of 
character there may be among those who choose 
any end beneath the highest. They may even 
seem to have no character at all, but they lack 
equally the voluntary element of a true manhood, 
which consists in always choosing a higher end 
when it comes into competition with a lower, and 



THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT. 269 

in making the highest end supreme, so that life 
will be at any time sacrificed rather than relin- 
quish it. 

And this shows us what it is for a being to fall 
morally. It is to relinquish the choice of that 
which is highest for the sake of an inferior good, 
and to make that supreme. It shows too what 
is meant in the Scriptures by " the flesh," and 
"the spirit," when they are said to be " contrary 
one to the other." The whole life of him who 
abides steadfast in the choice of that which is high- 
est is opposed in its spirit to that of him who 
adopts as supreme any inferior end ; and he who 
has once fallen and would regain his standing must 
maintain a constant struggle. 

The evils from a failure to choose the highest 
end are inherent, and are of two kinds. They 
are, first, from the want of congruity between th6 
end chosen and our nature. There must be that 
which is to our nature as God made it, what light 
is to the eye, or air to the lungs ; and unless we 
find that, whatever it be, there will be unrest. 
There can be no true success. There will also be 
evil from the want of harmony within the man 
himself. No man can fail to choose the highest 
end known to him, or that may be known, with- 
out rebelling against his better nature and subject- 
ing himself to self-reproach. The particular pas 
sion may be gratified, but the moral nature in 
outraged, and the man murft either suffer from it 



270 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

continually, or quiet it temporarily in some dis- 
ingenuous way. It is this last that most men do. 
There are more men who practice dishonesty upon 
themselves than upon others. 

It will follow, from the column of ends presented, 
that there is a difference not only in the quantity 
of the good to be derived from the action of the 
faculties in correspondence with their ends, but 
also in the quality. This is an important point 
in morals. Every principle of action has con- 
nected with it its own sensibility that differs in 
quality from every other. Especially is this true 
of the moral nature as we require the faculties to 
act in harmony with that, or in opposition to it. 
The deepest harmony of our being is that of the 
Will with the Moral Nature ; the most fearful dis- 
cord is .their opposition. From these we have a 
quality of enjoyment and of suffering wholly dif- 
ferent from any other, and through which we are 
able to enter into sympathy with the enjoyments 
and sufferings of the highest order of beings. 

Understanding as we now do, what the princi- 
ples of action are, and how character is formed, 
we are prepared to see three things. And the 
first is, what the highest good of man will be. It 
will be the result of the choice by him of the high- 
est end, and of an adherence to that under all 
possible conditions. He is to choose it both as 
congruous to his nature, and as required by obli* 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. — THE WHOLE GOOD. 271 

gation ; and if choice under such conditions will 
not secure the highest good, then our constitution 
is untrue to itself, and the government of the uni- 
verse is not moral. This end differs from all 
others in one thing, and in thus differing puts all 
men on an essential equality. He who chooses 
money or fame must work for them, but he who 
chooses God and his service, by the very act of 
choice so enters into that which he chooses and 
takes possession of it that nothing can deprive him 
of it but his own falling away from the act of 
choice. 

The second thing we are prepared to see is, 
what the whole good of man will be. The whole 
good will be from the conspiring forces of his 
whole nature acting in harmony. The highest 
good is independent of all that is below it. It 
may belong to the martyr at the stake. But 
every principle of action and every susceptibility 
of our nature is legitimate and good in its place. 
From the action of every one there results a good, 
and no good is to be rejected unless it comes to 
be lelatively, and in its time and place, an evil. 
" Every creature of God is good, and nothing to 
be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." 
The whole good of man will then consist in all 
the good, of whatever quality, that can be derived 
from all the susceptibilities and powers acting 
harmoniously. 

The third tiling we are prepared to see is the 



272 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

mode in which this good is to be attained. This 
is by acting in accordance with what I have here- 
tofore explained in this place as the Law of Limi- 
tation. This grows immediately out of the Law 
of the Conditioning and the Conditioned, and is 
simply an application to human life, bringing unity 
into that, of the principle by which God secures 
unity in the action of the several forces by which 
the processes of nature are carried on. Throughout 
the range of forces and faculties that have been pre- 
sented to you, you have seen that they have to each 
other the relation of Conditioning and Conditioned 
by which they are higher and lower ; and now it is 
to be noticed that the relative force of the lower 
is always precisely that which is requisite for the 
best operation of that which is higher. Vegetable 
life, for instance, being what it is, the force of co- 
hesion and of chemical affinity are just what they 
Bhould be to enable the roots to penetrate the 
&arth and to separate the needed elements. This 
is the law of the forces throughout, and gives us at 
once the law of limitation in regard to conduct. 
As the faculties and motive principles are higher 
or lower, so are the duties, the pleasures, the sat- 
isfactions connected with them. How far then 
may we go under any particular principle, as the 
love of property ? Just so far as will best pro- 
mote the action of the principles above it. So of 
the appetites, and all the others. Eat as much 
as you will, if eating up to that point will best 



THE LAW OF LIMITATION. 273 

promote the action of faculties above appetite. 
Follow the fashions, attend parties, balls, theatres 
as you choose, provided you do nothing to repress 
or limit your better nature and the power of God's 
Spirit within you. " We are called unto liberty." 
We have here, not a rule, but a principle. God 
does not govern man by rules. He never meant 
to. He would have them govern their faculties 
and principles of action, so liable to become a 
mob, and to bring unity and harmony into them 
on the same principle on which He governs his 
universe and brings unity and harmony into that. 

We thus know through the law of the condition- 
ing and the conditioned what is lower and what 
is higher, and so what is highest. We know 
therefore through this what the highest good of 
man is, and, as we have seen, it is to be attained 
simply by choosing it. Knowing thus the place 
of each faculty and principle, we know by the 
Law of Limitation how to hold it in its place and 
to make it work there ; and therefore we know 
through that what the whole good of man is and 
how to attain it. 

If the inquiry be made, as it will be, how those 
who know nothing of the Law of Limitation can 
regulate their conduct by it, it may be replied that 
this is only what takes place in other cases. To 
all fundamental laws involved in our nature man- 
kind conform themselves in some measure, in- 
stinctively. They were under the law of gravi 
lft 



274 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

tation, and regulated their movements by it before 
that law was discovered, but had no philosophy 
of those movements. In the same way they con- 
form to the laws of health and of taste by what 
may be called physical and rational instincts till, 
at length, underlying principles are discovered, 
and then philosophy comes in, enabling them to 
comprehend processes, and give reasons, and apply 
tests as they could not otherwise. To some ex- 
tent there is, no doubt, an immediate and direct 
apprehension of what is higher and lower in mo- 
tive and in conduct, and of obligation as conse- 
quent upon that, but that does not give us a phi- 
losophy. To make progress, here, as elsewhere, 
we must reach comprehension, and law, and un- 
derlying reasons where there had seemed to be 
mere fortuity, or caprice, or impulse, or instinct. 



LECTURE XXL 

ORIGINAL OBJECTS. — ACTION AND ITS CONSE- 
QUENCES. — PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION FROM THE 
CONSTITUTION. — NO CHRISTIAN MORAL PHI- 
LOSOPHY. — CHOICE. — SUPREME ENDS. — SU- 
PREME PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. — CONSCIENCE. 

— A NATURE AND A NECESSITY AFTER CHOICE. 

— MORAL AFFECTIONS. — MORAL EMOTIONS- 

— RELIGIOUS EMOTIONS. — THE LAW OF CON- 
STRUCTION. — THE LAW OF CONDUCT. — TEST 
OF PROGRESS. — POSITION OF MAN AS A WOR- 
SHIPPER. 

At the commencement of these lectures I said 
I had three objects in yiew. One was to present 
man in his unity. Another, and a principal ob- 
ject, was to try the experiment of popularizing, in 
some measure, metaphysical subjects by means of 
the blackboard. The third was to present some 
views of my own, perhaps worthy of attention. 

The first of these objects, the presentation of 
man in his unity, I hope to accomplish before 
closing this lecture. We have brought him up to 
the point of choice. The choice itself and its re- 
sults remain to be considered. 



276 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

In regard to the second object, I am encour- 
aged. So far as I know it is the first attempt to 
instruct a popular audience on metaphysical sub- 
jects through the eye, and from the attention 
given, and from remarks that I hear, I cannot 
help thinking that in the hands of one practiced 
and skillful in its use, the method might be of es- 
sential aid. Following the clew given by the law 
of the Conditioning and the Conditioned, without 
which these lectures could not have been given in 
this form, what might otherwise seem complex be- 
comes simple. To one viewing the array before you 
for the first time it must seem complex, but how 
simple it is. We have, as you see, a perfect series 
of related forces and products, from gravitation up. 
The forces and products themselves cannot be 
presented to the eye, but their relations can, and 
by presenting them thus those relations are more 
clearly apprehended, the attention is held, and the 
memory is aided. 

As to any views of my own, my wish has been, 
and will be, to present them fairly, and to have 
them stand on their own merits. 

It remains to us, as I have said, to speak of ac- 
tion and its consequences. We have constituted 
the person, and seen his prerogatives. Now he is 
to act. But action morally is choice. In that 
alone is freedom. We are therefore to consider 
that. The choice must lie between different ends 
as presented in the last lecture, but in making it 



A SUPBEME END NECESSABY. 277 

we have first to consider whether we will take 
obligation into the account or not. If we do that 
fully and fairly it is impossible for us to choose as 
our supreme end any but the highest, or what we 
suppose to be so. Hence the necessity of a su- 
preme end in a system of morals, and the impossi- 
bility of reaching the full import of obligation, 
and so of moral law, till we reach that. The 
point where the highest good is apprehended is 
the Sinai whence the moral law proceeds. Obliga- 
tion accepted will continue to assert itself all the 
way up, and unless the highest end be chosen 
there can be no peace. There must be either 
criminal stupidity or intestine war. " There is 
no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." 

If obligation be accepted and the highest end 
be chosen, then we have nothing to do but to let 
the other principles of action take their places and 
act variously with varying conditions under the 
law of limitation. If obligation be not accepted, 
if we ignore or neglect that peculiar part of our 
nature which lies back of the line and prompts 
from behind, then we are to make our choice 
along the whole line below the highest. Doing 
this we may seem, but only seem to be afloat, 
and to have no fixed character ; or we may choose 
definitely some lower principle and act with en- 
ergy under it. Doing this last the law of limita- 
tion for the other principles of action including 
obligation, which never can properly come under 



278 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

fr.hat law, will have a false standard. It will have 
the principle or end chosen as supreme as its 
standard, and all other principles and ends will 
be subordinated with reference to that. 

If I have stated rightly what the powers of 
man are and their relation to each other, there 
must be some object of choice or end that it would 
be according to his whole nature to choose as 
supreme. Not properly, or in the highest sense, 
is that natural, though often so called, which is 
demanded by some one natural principle of action 
that would overstep its limits ; but that which 
is demanded by the whole constitution when the 
powers act in harmony. Rising, as these powers 
and principles of action do, one above another, 
and Obligation constantly demanding, when they 
conflict, that the highest shall prevail, it must be 
according to the whole nature that the highest 
end, whatever that may be, shall be chosen as 
supreme. As thus put, it is self evident that what 
is natural, and what is obligatory, that is, what 
ought to be done, must coincide. Indeed, obliga- 
tion, as necessarily affirmed, comes in as a part 
of nature, and a part too which a comprehen- 
sive wisdom can least afford to disregard. There 
must, therefore, be a coincidence of nature, and 
obligation, and wisdom, in demanding the choice 
of the highest end. The choice itself is a spirit- 
ual and free act, above and outside of nature, and 
may, therefore, be unnatural, and wrong, and fool- 



NO CHRISTIAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 279 

ish. It lies in a region where wisdom and folly, 
holiness and sin are possible, and where we find 
laws and results impossible in the region of mattel 
and of necessity. 

It is because all normal conduct must thus grow 
out of the constitution, that a philosophy of con- 
duct, or a Moral Philosophy, is possible. This 
philosophy will consist in such a knowledge of 
the constitution of man as God made it, and of the 
possible objects of choice, as will enable him who 
has it to say what the supreme end or object of 
choice should be, and to adjust the whole range of 
active principles according to the law and end of 
the being regarded as a whole. To be philosophi- 
cal, rules for the use of the eye must be derived 
from a knowledge of its structure and end; and 
so of man as a whole. There can be no philoso- 
phy of conduct for him that is not derived from a 
knowledge of his constitution and end. Hence it 
is only in a modified sense that there can be such 
a thing as a Christian Moral Philosophy. In 
strictness there is no such thing* So far as man 
is now a ruin there can be no knowledge of what 
his restoration would be, nor any philosophy of 
the mode of it, except through a knowledge of 
what the constitution originally was, and ought to 
be. So far as Christianity is a revelation it is not 
science. It is to be simply interpreted, and ac- 
cepted. So far as men are governed authoritatively 
by the precepts of Christianity there is no philos- 



280 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

ophy. Obedience is either slavish, or from faith. 
So far as Christianity requires special duties they 
must be duties demanded by a right adjust- 
ment of our powers in the new relations in which 
Christianity places us. If Christianity be not 
fundamentally in accord with our original consti- 
tution, and will not restore man to a true man- 
hood, and the highest manhood, we cannot accept 
it. Hence a true moral science will, and must be, 
independent of revelation, and will be a test of 
anything claiming to be that, for nothing that can 
be shown to be really in opposition, either to the 
reason or to the moral nature of man, can be from 
God. Say if you please, that on this ground man 
is incapable of constructing a moral science. Be 
it so. The past would almost seem to justify the 
assertion. Still, we are not required to call that 
science which is not science, but is either impulse. 
or instinct, or faith. Certainly philosophy is for 
the maturity of the race. Certainly human life, 
not the life of children only, but of men, and of 
the most enlightened men, ought to be largely 
controlled by authority and by faith. It befits 
our condition, and there is no more natural or en- 
nobling principle of action than faith. 

Passing now as was proposed, to Choice ana its 
results, the question is what supreme end we shall 
choose. To this different answers are given and 
earnestly contended for, though often meaning 



SUPREME PRINCIPLE OF ACTION. 281 

the same thing. One says perfection is the thing 
fco be chosen. In this he includes, no doubt, that 
result in the sensibility which comes from perfec- 
tion, for mere perfection of being or of adjustment 
without activity or results can avail nothing. An 
other says that virtue is to be chosen. It is to be 
chosen for itself, and has in it its own reward. Be- 
ing itself an act of choice, and wholly in the will, 
it is not easy to see how virtue can be chosen as a 
supreme end, or an end at all ; but the thing pri- 
marily regarded here J3 right activity, the state 
and results being taken for granted. When those 
holding this speak, as they constantly do and 
must, of virtue as its own reward, they mean by 
reward a result in the sensibility wholly different 
from the virtue itself. Another says that the 
thing to be really chosen and valued for ourselves 
and others, is the satisfaction resulting from per- 
fection and from virtuous activity, and which can 
be had in no other way. He says that a rational 
being comprehending his own capacities and the 
capacities of others would choose as his end the 
highest good of all beings capable of good. Here 
the result is primarily regarded, taking for granted 
the state and the activity. 

But that these persons mean the same thing, 
will be more evident, if, instead of inquiring what 
we are to choose as an end, we inquire what prin- 
ciple of action we are to make supreme. Those 
making the same principle of action supreme will 



282 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

have the same radical character, will really choose 
the same supreme end, and it is a pity they should 
dispute about words. But in regard to this there 
is substantial agreement, at least among those 
claiming to be christians. They agree that the 
principle that should be made supreme is Love. 
But what is this ? Here men differ. I suppose 
it is rational and moral love, and by this I mean 
more than sentiment, or emotion, or affinity, or 
than choice from these. It is to be distinguished 
from the natural affections that come before 
choice, and from complacent love that comes after 
it. It is not, as so many suppose, benevolence as a 
sentiment, but as an act of choice and of will. 
Central to it is a rational choice of the good of 
those loved for its own sake, and those loved must 
include not only those attractive to us and in 
whom we can feel complacency, but the debased, 
and evil and unthankful, and those manifesting 
personal enmity. In short, it must be a love like 
that of God in giving his Son for us ; like that of 
the Son in dying for us, and in praying for his 
murderers on the cross. This love of God for men 
was a holy love, but in it he sought their good, 
and not the doing of right for the sake of the right. 
Since, then, men are so much better agreed about 
the principle of action that should be supreme 
than about the end, though they really amount to 
the same thing, we will start from that ; and if 
we would represent to the eye the different results, 



CONSCIENCE. 



283 



as we choose the highest as supreme or one that is 
lower, we must make two columns. To do this 
we recur to the column of possible principles of 
action presented in the last lecture, any one of 
which may be made supreme, and construct the 
columns thus, making Moral Love supreme in the 
one column, and Ambition in the other. 



1-4 q 

GG Oh 
50 



f 


rGoD. 




'Worship. Idolatry 




Power to 


W 




Worship 


Glory, 
Honor, 


O 


Moral 


Vanity, 




Blessing, 


M 




Pride. 


and < 


Ascription of 


Ph 


Emo- -< 


Religious 


Praise. 
Thanksgiv- 


O 


TIONS. 


Joy, 
Hope, 


Emotions. 


ing, 
Adoration, 


X, 




k 


3 ^ 






( Peace. 


CQ 




Moral 


_ 


fc 




Emotions. 


Jot, 


O 




'Revenge. 




^Hope, 




Moral 


Wrath, 


Moral 


f Moral 


B 
o 


Affec- «< 


Hatred, 


Affec- *> 


Indignation. 


TIONS. 


Envy, 




Complacent 








^ TIONS. 


<Love. 




^ 


, Emulation, 


MORAL 


LOYE. 




AMBI1 


TON. 



You will see that I have placed conscience along- 
side of this whole movement, as pertaining to it 
all. Hitherto I have not spoken of Conscience, be- 
cause, as I understand it, it does not appear except 
in connection with our own moral choices. Hav- 
ing a moral nature we might judge correctly of 
the moral conduct of others, but that would not be 



284 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

conscience. Conscience is our moral consciousness 
in connection with our own choices — not our out- 
ward acts, but our choices. It is at work previous 
to choice affirming obligation to choose in accor- 
dance with that which is highest ; and after choice 
it gives us, in connection with the ideas of merit 
and demerit, the feelings of self-approbation, and of 
guilt and remorse. Like consciousness it is a know- 
ing with. We know our choices, and together 
with the knowledge of them we have through 
Conscience, a knowledge of their moral quality, 
and so a judgment concerning them. It is there- 
fore strictly personal, and resembles the tribunal 
of God in judging of choices and motives. Its 
precise nature and office are given by the Apostle 
Paul when he says, " For when the Gentiles 
which have not the law do by nature the things 
contained in the law, these having not the law, 
are a law unto themselves. Which show the 
work of the law written in their hearts, their 
conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts 
the meanivhile accusing or else excusing one an- 
other" Here we see that the law is one thing 
and the conscience another. But the law is a law 
within us by which we become a law to ourselves, 
and what can that be but the moral nature, as I 
have said, affirming obligation and enabling us to 
judge generally of moral subjects, while, in its re- 
lations to us personally and when we come to act, 
this same moral nature becomes conscience, and 



MB. MARTINEAU AND CONSCIENCE. 285 

Dears witness to the moral quality of our choices, 
and either accuses or excuses us for what we do. 
The acts are done by the man, the " bearing wit- 
ness," and the " accusing " and " excusing," are 
done by the conscience. 

We know our choices, and also whether they 
are or are not in accordance with what we believe 
obligation requires. It is to this last, that con- 
science " witnesses," and then either excuses or 
accuses us. This makes the office of conscience 
wholly different from that assigned it by Mr. 
Martineau. He says that " when the whole se- 
ries of springs of action has been experienced, the 
feeling or ' knowledge with ourselves,' of their rel- 
ative rank constitutes the individual conscience." 1 
But this seems to me merely preliminary, and not 
the action of conscience at all. Let a man judge 
as he may of the springs of action, there is no 
" accusing " or " excusing " connected with it. 
He judges of them as of other things, and how is 
he to know if he judges wrongly ? But every man 
must know whether he chooses and acts in accor- 
dance with his sense of obligation. Mr. Martineau 
places the office of Conscience at the point where 
we judge of springs of action. I place it at the 
point where we judge of our choices as conformed 
or not conformed to the demands of obligation. In 
his view it has nothing to do with the will ; in my 
view it respects the action of the will, and that 

i Review of WheweWs Morality, p. 17. 



286 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

only. Taking cognizance only of choices and mo- 
tives, the judgment of conscience has nothing to do 
with means, or opportunity, or outward failure or 
success ; and if we deal honestly with it, it will 
accord with, and anticipate the judgment of God. 1 

And not only do we have conscience given in 
connection with a choice which determines the 
drift of character, but also Moral Affections. The 
difference between the Natural and the Moral 
Affections is, that the Natural Affections spring 
up before choice, and so independently of it that 
we are not responsible for their existence, though 
we are for their regulation ; while the Moral Af- 
fections spring up only after choice, and are so 
dependent upon it that we are responsible for their 
existence and character. In a sense they are nat- 
ural. They are as uniform and necessary after a 
supreme choice as the natural affections are before 
that. They become spontaneous, are a part of the 
character, and, as pertaining to the moral nature, 
are deeper and more influential than the affections, 
merely natural. This has not been understood as 
it should be. 

I have just said that the Moral Affections are 
necessary after choice, and from this we see the 
central point held by choice in our being. It is 
the point of Freedom. Everywhere below that, as 
I showed you, the movement, whatever it may be, 
is by necessity, and I showed you the harmony 
there is between freedom and necessity as thus 

1 See Appendix D. 



NECESSITY AFTER CHOICE. 287 

existing, and that necessity must be a condition 
for the stable, and consistent, and intelligent ac- 
tion of a free being. It must stand below him, 
and he must rule oyer it, and by the yery means 
of it. But we now pass oyer into another region of 
necessity, and, if you please, into what may be 
called another region of nature. A man may, or 
may not, make the loye of country supreme. That 
depends upon choice. But if he does that, he 
must haye a complacent loye for eyery man into 
whose face he looks, and who, he knows, has a 
similar loye. This is by necessity, but it is in 
consequence of choice. And again, let this same 
man see a traitor, and he must feel moral indigna- 
tion. He must feel it, and will know that he has 
a right to feel it, and ought to feel it, though it 
has often been a puzzle to see how that which is 
thus necessary and spontaneous could be justly 
commanded, or could be a part of moral character 
It is a part of moral character ; nothing more so 
there is nothing for which we are more fully re- 
sponsible, and we see how this comes to be. 

We may see also that, as the necessity in nature 
that is before freedom is necessary in order that 
man may rule oyer nature ; so also is the neces- 
sity after freedom of consequences within himself 
necessary in order that God may rule oyer him by 
any system of natural consequences, or indeed by 
reward and punishment in any form. If the will- 
ful lie or fraud did not necessitate a stain ; if the 



288 AK OUTLINE STUDY OF MAK. 

violation of obligation did not necessitate a sense 
of guilt ; there could be nothing in himself that 
would lead him to avoid the violation of obliga- 
tion, or by which he could know the meaning of 
punishment. The sense of guilt and the remorse 
are not the punishment, but without them no suf- 
fering inflicted for the vindication of authority, 
or for sustaining the majesty of law, can be known 
as punishment. So it is that freedom lies between 
two forms of necessity, the one necessary to the 
existence of freedom, the other to the moral gov- 
ernment of free beings. 

We will now consider in their order the neces- 
sary results, first of choosing as a supreme end 
that which is highest, or, which is the same thing, 
of making supreme the highest principle of action. 
This is set down in the scheme as Moral Love. 
We will then consider the results of making Am- 
bition supreme. 

Of Moral Love the first necessary result will 
be the Moral Affections. Complacent Love and 
Moral Indignation may be said to include all the 
moral affections, the indignation being evolved 
from the love when the occasion calls for it, as its 
opposite pole. In this love it is that we find the 
proper, and the only enduring basis of friendship 
as distinguished from mere affinity, and from com- 
binations on the ground of interest. With mu- 
tual complacency on the ground of moral charac- 
ter, involving confidence, there is a foundation for 



MORAL EMOTIONS. 289 

a permanent social state, and for the highest con- 
ceivable good from such a state ; and there can be 
no other. 

The Moral Emotions, as Hope, Joy, and Peace, 
presuppose the moral affections as the fragrance 
presupposes the flower. These, and the religious 
emotions equally, are the most complex products 
of the mind, the effluence of all its faculties in 
their highest activity. Intellect, sensibility, choice, 
are all inyolved. Hope implies desire unsatisfied. 
It is mingled desire and expectation ; but joy is 
fruition itself in the highest form of the Sensibility. 
It is the rational spirit in the consciousness of its 
own perfection and of the attainment of its ends. 
If those ends have been reached through struggle, 
the moment of victory is preeminently one of joy ; 
but if the struggle is over and all the forces 
within and without with which the spirit has to 
deal, move with a balanced activity as the quiet 
heavens, then the joy settles into Peace. 

To the Moral Emotions which must thus enter 
into and pervade the life of one who chooses the 
highest supreme end, the Scriptures give the high 
place which we see they have as I have presented 
them, and which they must have in any true sys- 
tem of philosophy. Their Hope is a hope that is 
" an anchor to the soul." Their Joy is an " un- 
speakable " joy ; and any sacrifice needed for its 
attainment they justify by the example of Him, 
" who, for the joy that was set before him, en- 



290 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

dured the cross, despising the shame." Their 
Peace also is a peace that may " be as a river," 
and that " passeth all understanding." 

The Religious Emotions come next, and are the 
crowning element in worship. These differ from 
the moral emotions as called forth in view of God 
and his attributes ; and as generally requiring, in 
their highest form, volition as well as choice. 
Hope and joy and peace are from choice without 
volition, but thanksgiving, and praise, ^nd bless- 
ing, and all forms of ascription, in which alone the 
religious emotions find their culmination, require 
not only Intellect, and Sensibility, and Choice, 
but also Volition. It is thus that in worship, the 
lower animal nature being held in reverent abey- 
ance, everything that is truly man, his whole in- 
tellectual and moral and spiritual nature, are 
brought to their highest activity. The Will, as 
central, brings the whole being before God and 
offers it to Him, the emotions going up as incense. 

In the moral affections and emotions thus origi- 
nated, there will be an immediate good consonant 
with our being, but the action of conscience in 
connection with them is not to be overlooked. 
Conscience is not only a witness to record, and a 
judge to acquit, it also approves and rewards. 
Connected with it, is its own sensibility having in 
it monition and prophecy, and an element of 
peculiar satisfaction that gives the key note to 
that joy of the spirit that springs from the har- 



AMBITION MADE SUPREME. 291 

mony of all its powers. Without this there may 
be what shall be called joy, but it is of another 
quality. There may be " the joy of the hypo- 
crite " which " is but for a moment," but there 
can be no foundation for adequate and permanent 
joy except as the voice of conscience gives assur- 
ance of the harmony of the whole soul with itself 
and with God. No outward prosperity can avail 
anything, while this Mordecai sits at the KingV 
gate and refuses to recognize it as legitimate. 

So is it that all the powers are harmonized in the 
choice of the highest supreme end ; so is it that wis- 
dom and duty conspire in leading us to that choice. 

We next turn to the other column, and to the 
necessary results of choosing any end lower than 
the highest. 

We will suppose power to be made the supreme 
end, and so the love of power, or Ambition, to be 
chosen as the supreme principle of action. Let 
this be done, and the moral affections placed in 
the diagram above ambition will spring up of 
necessity. Let another come into competition 
with one thus choosing power, and there will be 
emulation. Let his rival surpass him, and there 
will be envy ; and there is no hatred, or wrath, 
or revenge that will not stir in a man and become 
settled passion, issuing in every form of cruelty 
and crime as the pursuit of power becomes intense, 
and as others become obstacles in the way. Con- 
science and humanity and other natural and beau- 



292 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

tiful principles of action may have wide scope, 
but if the love of power be really supreme, when 
the occasion demands it, they will give way, and 
violence, or treachery, or whatever means may be 
needed to secure the end will be employed. 

Of the Moral Emotions, Hope and Joy will be 
the same in name as when the right supreme end 
is chosen. The pursuit of any end implies hope, 
and the attainment of it joy, or at least some kind 
of satisfaction ; but in quantity, and quality, and 
permanence, and in their affinities, there may be 
a difference heaven wide. And such difference 
there is. Legitimate joy abides, and either be- 
comes the peace of which I have spoken, or alter- 
nates with it. What man needs is a joy that 
may settle into peace, a peace that may at any 
time rise into joy, as the floods may, now " clap 
their hands," and now reflect the quiet image of 
heaven. But the joy of a selfish ambition, exclud- 
ing, as it must, a sense of dependence on God and 
the love of others, will connect itself with pride 
and vanity and self -idolatry, and these are incom- 
patible with peace. 

If we pass up to the religious nature, it is clearly 
impossible that one who makes power his supreme 
end should have in his worship of God the element 
that is central to all true worship, that is the sub- 
mission of the will. There may be for such an 
one much that is emotive and aesthetic in some- 
thing that is called religion and worship. In the 



IDOLATRY. 293 

absence of the spiritual elements of submission 
and self-consecration there will be special tempta- 
tion to appeal to the senses, and to the taste 
through art ; but that a man making power his 
supreme end should worship God in spirit and in 
truth would be a contradiction, because, to make 
anything aside from God supreme either in the 
affections or the will, is essential idolatry. It is 
for this reason that idolatry is placed where it is, 
in the diagram. It must be there if there be 
religion at all ; and history has shown that it is 
impossible for men to divest themselves wholly of 
their religious nature. 

The direct results just mentioned, of choosing 
as supreme any object or principle of action below 
the highest, are as^ inevitable as those under any 
law of nature. I call these results direct, because 
they involve the action of those faculties that look 
directly at their objects without reference to the 
action of the Moral Nature that now becomes 
Conscience, and that acts only with reference to 
the character of the previous action of the mind 
itself. It is the peculiarity of the moral nature, 
as shown by its position in the diagram, that it 
presupposes direct voluntary action either con- 
templated or performed in view of objects sup- 
posed to have in them a good : the idea of a good 
and the action of the faculties respecting it being 
thus the underlying condition of the action of 
the moral nature. This gives us the position 



294 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

of the moral nature and the key to the problems 
respecting it. Its action, sometimes called reflex, 
and as related to previous action really so, is yet 
direct upon its own object, which is the character 
of voluntary action. If the choice be in accord- 
ance with the highest good, the conscience will 
approve ; if not, it will condemn ; and this action 
is as necessary after choice as any of the results al- 
ready mentioned. This it is that makes the posi- 
tion of the wrong-doer so fearful. It is that the 
moral nature is a nature, a part of himself acting 
by necessity, so that there is no escape. The bat- 
teries of conscience, it will be seen, are planted all 
along the line, and at any point where there is 
wrong-doing, as there is at every point when a 
wrong supreme end has been chosen, they are 
ready to open fire. If these batteries may be 
silenced for a time, they are yet consciously there ; 
the act of silencing them but charges them more 
highly, and the only possible ground of a peace that 
may at any time rise into joy is the perfect accord 
of the moral nature, acting as Conscience, with the 
Will. Let the Conscience act so in the light that its 
decisions shall coincide with the law of God, thus 
becoming legitimately Law, and let the Will act as 
Love, and then the Law of Love will reign, and 
there will be conscious, permanent, and universal 
peace. But let the Will, on the other hand, fail to 
need the monitions of Conscience, and no result 
under any law of nature can be more certain than 
the disorder and misery that must ensue. 



THE LAW OF CONSTRUCTION. 295 

We have now completed our work in its details, 
and the results have been presented to the eye in 
parts. In doing this we have needed to know the 
law of construction for the universe, and the law 
of conduct for man. The law of construction is 
the law of the conditioning and the conditioned, 
This, I have said, implies throughout the relation 
of lower and higher, and that relation has been 
indicated by their position on the board. This 
relation of conditioning is simply that of neces- 
Bary presupposition without causation ; and if any 
question, as some may, and plausibly too in cer- 
tain cases, whether that which conditions is always 
lower, they may express the relation of the two by 
placing the condition back of the conditioned, as I 
did in my lectures four years since, and as is don© 
in Appendix A, in " The Law of Love." But in 
either case it is the law of the conditioning and 
the conditioned that is the law of construction. 
So is it with the works of man ; so, as far as we 
can understand them, with the works of God. 
This law holds throughout, but when it brings us 
up to the point of choice we need a Law of Con- 
duct. Construction is for the sake of conduct. 
Conduct is higher, and in order to be philosophi- 
cal it must not only grow out of the construction 
by instinct, or impulse, or faith, but must be seen 
to grow out of it, and be adopted on that ground. 
As adopted by faith it may be rational, but to be 
philosophical it must be seen to grow out of the 



296 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

construction. It is the business of a rational and 
free being, not to create anything as God did, but 
to construct a course of conduct. And this he is 
to do from the same principle, and on the same 
model as God has constructed the universe. The 
principle is Love. This we learn from the Word 
of God. The model is a variety of forces, broader 
and less broad, which may be represented by a 
pyramid, the forces being regulated in their rela- 
tion to each other by the Law of Limitation. 
This we learn from the works of God. And these 
two give us the Law of Conduct. Conduct is to 
spring from Rational Love, the man, meantime, 
being brought under obligation through the con- 
science to regulate the various impulsive principles 
of action according to the Law of Limitation. 
Combining thus the word and the works of God, 
we gain a true philosophy both of Nature and of 
human life. 

As has been said, the results of our work have 
been presented to the eye in parts, let us now look 
at them as a whole. That we may do this we 
bring together in one diagram, the several parts 
already presented. 1 Viewing them thus we have 
only to begin at gravitation and follow the series 
up to see how perfectly the laws of construction 
and of limitation, as they have been explained, 
apply in every case ; and how simple the series is. 
These laws apply up to the point where the Law 

1 See diagram at the end. 



THE TEST OF PROGRESS. 297 

of Conduct is needed. Then the Law of Con- 
struction stops, but that of Limitation continues 
throughout. The Law of Conduct is not less sim 
p]e in its principle than the others, nor, except 
from a want of simplicity and thorough honesty 
in ourselves or others, should we find it difficult of 
application. God would have men govern their 
lives on the same principle on which He governs 
the universe. Let them do that, and their lives 
will be brought into harmony with Him, into har- 
mony with themselves, and ultimately into har- 
mony with all their surroundings. Thus men 
will confer upon others whatever of good they are 
capable of conferring, and will enjoy whatever of 
good they are capable of enjoying through the sus- 
ceptibilities and powers of their being, acting ac- 
cording to its law. 

Looking at the series as a whole we find a test 
of the progress of the race. Civilization is not 
progress. It belongs in the lower part of the dia- 
gram, in the region of the appetites and desires 
and of Beauty. By ministering to luxury and art 
and to the senses merely, civilization may retard 
progress. It has often done so. There is no 
more formidable obstacle to progress than a cor- 
rupt and effete civilization. As compared with 
that a state of barbarism is hopeful. But the 
things which belong to the Spirit are in another 
and a higher region, and it is here that we find 
the test of progress. That test is not in the ex- 



298 AN OUTLINE SXUDY OF MAN, 

tent of knowledge, or in the progress of civiliza- 
tion, but in the extent to which the masses are 
under the control of that which is highest in the 
diagram, and the extent to which they adopt a 
law of conduct in harmony with the conscience. 
Civilization should, and always will ultimately 
accompany the paramount activity of the higher 
powers ; but there may be individuals, as the an- 
cient patriarchs, and communities, high in spiritual 
growth, who are yet but partially civilized, while 
there may be an advanced, and refined, and con- 
temptuous civilization that is contemptible and 
well-nigh hopeless. It is Christianity alone, awak- 
ening into life and regulating the higher powers^ 
that can furnish the conditions of permanent prog- 
ress ; and nowhere does a spiritual Christianity 
find an opposition so intrenched and so bitter as in 
the bosom of such civilizations and from the idola- 
tries consonant with them. 

In closing, I ask your attention to the complex 
nature of that which stands highest on the scheme 
as worship ; and to the position of man as a wor- 
shipper. 

It will be seen that the affections and acts in- 
volved in worship are conditioned on all that is 
below them. From this it will follow that wor- 
ship is the highest act which man can perform, 
and that his nature does not reach its full expres- 
sion without that. Take,, for instance, the intelli- 
gent ascription of praise to God, and it will be 



worship. 299 

found to presuppose and involve the presence and 
activity of every element of our proper humanity. 
lu presupposes the Intellect, and the recognition 
by that of the being of God, and of his perfections 
so manifested as to be worthy of praise. It pre- 
supposes the Sensibility, and that it is awake to 
every manifestation of the divine perfections. 
The expression of praise is, indeed, a manifesta- 
tion of the Sensibility itself in an exalted state. It 
presupposes also the Will, and that too in joyful 
submission. Without the submission of the Will, 
there may be external acts of homage through in- 
terest or fear, but there can be no true worship. 
With the Intellect, the Sensibility, and the Will, 
thus active in view of the highest possible object, 
there could not fail to be complacent love, and, 
based on that, in connection with the filial rela- 
tion, joy, and peace. These being given, the will 
of a rational being could hardly fail to be put 
forth in the form of choice to praise God, and in 
the form of volition to give to that praise its high- 
est outward expression. The ascription of praise 
would thus go up from the whole of his being a? 
the odor goes up from the plant All that is be- 
low in the plant, every leaf and rootlet, contributes 
to the fragrance of its blossom. And so it is with 
praise, and with all rignt forms of worship. They 
are the complete and full expression of our proper 
humanity carried up to its nighest point. Failing 
to reach this point, humanity fails of its proper 



300 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN. 

amplitude and upward growth ; there is reaction 
downward, and the whole being becomes dwarfed 
and perverted. 

But in worshipping God man does not act for 
himself alone. He is the priest of nature. Stand- 
ing at its head, and he alone recognizing the Crea- 
tor, it is only through him that the praise that 
goes up from all parts of the works of God can 
find intelligent expression. From the beginning 
of time those works have been an expression of 
the perfections of God. As we now look at the 
march of the creation that expression was rela- 
tively feeble at first, but has become more full 
and pronounced at every new epoch. With the 
progress in time there has also been progress up- 
ward in the manifestation of those forces and 
products which we have in the series before us, 
but until man came the expression of praise did 
not become conscious and articulate. It was for 
him to gather it up and give it voice, and it is one 
of his high and peculiar prerogatives to do this. 
He needs but to have an ear rightly attuned, as 
was that of him who heard the heavens declaring 
the glory of God, or that of the Apostle John, in 
Patmos, and to put it to the universe as God has 
made it, to hear a low voice coming up from gravi- 
tation giving praise to God. And then he would 
hear that voice rising as he should go up through 
Cohesion, and Chemical Affinity, and Vegetable 
Life, and Animal Life, and Rational Life, and the 



WORSHIP. 301 

provision made for every living thing, until he 
would come into full sympathy with the Apostle, 
and, with him, be ready to say an regard to the 
whole universe of God, " And every creature which 
is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the 
earth ; and such as are in the sea, and all that are 
in them, heard I saying, blessing, and honor, and 
glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon 
the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. v 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX A. 



The relation of inorganic matter to vegetables, and of 
vegetables to animals, as indicated in the text, demands 
attention from its bearing on the doctrine of final causes. 
Not agreeing with President Porter in his great work, 
that we have an intuition of final cause, or end, as uni- 
versal and necessary as that of an efficient cause, I did 
not place it among the intuitions in the text. Omitting 
it there, it did not fall in my way to treat of it specifi- 
cally otherwise. I now call attention to it not only 
from its importance as an aid to scientific inquiry and 
from its place as essential to any rational explanation 
of this universe, but because, since this book was pub- 
lished, a new phase of the denial of that doctrine has 
become prominent. That phase has come in connection 
with the doctrine of evolution, and consists in a denial 
that adaptation within an organism implies design. 
This denial, covering so wide and prominent a field, is 
then assumed, directly or impliedly, to extend to a 
denial of all design in nature. 

The ideas of adaptation and of design naturally go to- 
gether. By some eminent writers they have not been 
distinguished, but they are so far not the same that in- 



APPENDIX. 303 

stances of adaptation without design are not infrequent. 
As an instance of this, Paley mentions the skin of the 
dog-fish used to polish wood. A natural cave is adapted 
to furnish shelter, but was not designed for that. Such 
instances are, however, accidental and trivial. The more 
recent denial is made in connection with the doctrine of 
evolution, and covers a large part of the adaptations 
found in organic nature. 

Adaptation in organized nature may be divided into 
three classes. There may be, first, an adaptation of the 
parts of an organized whole to each other. In this case 
we may conceive of an adaptive principle or force within 
an organism that shall strive towards the perfection of 
the whole, and produce modifications conducive to that. 
The presence of such a force in the organism itself, 
which cannot be supposed to be intelligent, would seem 
to be indicated when the ends of a broken bone are knit 
together, when a new joint is formed, or when the ar- 
teries adjacent to one that is tied are enlarged. 

Again, there may be an adaptation of environment 
to organization, so that the environment shall act upon 
the organism in the way of causation. It is thus that 
Professor Tyndall accounts for the eye. He supposes 
it to have been formed gradually by the action of light 
upon the more susceptible pigment cells of an organism 
vaguely sensitive all over. So the horse, with five toes 
originally, has gradually come, through the action of 
environment upon organism to have but one. So, too, 
whales and porpoises, said to have been at one time 
land animals, are supposed to have had their organism 
gradually and during long ages so modified that they 
live in the water. 



304 APPENDIX. 

From these two classes of adaptation we turn to the 
third. In this we find an adaptation of system to system 
without causation, but simply as one system avails itself 
of another as its condition. Aggregated matter in cer- 
tain combinations is a condition of vegetables, but no 
one can suppose there is in that anything that produces 
the adaptations within the vegetables, or that there is in 
either any causative power to produce that relation by 
which one avails itself of the other. But as between 
vegetables and animals the case is still stronger. They 
mutually modify the atmosphere for the benefit of each 
other. Only a designing power outside of both could 
have arranged for this. But more striking still is the 
fact that animal life is wholly dependent on vegetables 
for its sustenance. Here we have living organisms not 
merely ministering to themselves and providing for the 
continuance of their species, but doing their great work, 
the only work that really has any value, by ministering 
to an order of beings wholly above and outside of them- 
selves. By no possibility could such an adaptation have 
been originated by either the vegetable or the animal, 
and it is too varied and extended and precise, as well as 
too important in its results, to have originated from any 
other than an intelligent and designing cause outside of 
both. 

Cases similar in principle are numerous where there 
is no organism. What adaptation, for example, can be 
more perfect than that of the air to evaporate water, 
and freshen it when salt, and to bear it up in clouds ? 
Here is not only an adaptation that is perfect, but a 
function that is essential to both vegetable and animal 
life, and yet any interaction between the air and the 



APPENDIX. 305 

water affecting their inner structure is out of the ques- 
tion. 

Can, then, the adaptations of this universe be ac- 
counted for without design? That is the whole ques- 
tion. The adaptations themselves no one denies. We 
say, No. Whatever plausibility there may be in partic- 
ular cases, we regard as wholly inadequate the attempt, 
made in connection with evolution, to account without 
design for adaptation as found in any whole department 
of nature. This we say with no reference to the ques- 
tion whether evolution itself, if it be supposed to in- 
clude a system of favorable interaction between organism 
and environment, does not necessarily involve design in 
its widest form. We think it does. But be this as it 
may, we say that, as within the organism, no such at- 
tempt can account for the valves in the veins, or for the 
second set of teeth, or for the finger nails, or for the 
contrivance for pulling down the lower jaw. As be- 
tween organism and environment, we say that no sup- 
position of interaction between them can save from 
puerility the attempt to account thus for the formation 
of even one eye, much less of two eyes in the right 
place, or for the long neck of the giraffe, or the trunk 
of the elephant. But leaving these departments of na- 
ture out of the question, we say that the cases men- 
tioned under the third head are wholly untouched by 
any form of evolution or transformism. No inner nisus, 
or felt want, or habit of use, or any kind of blind appe- 
tency or force can account for that relation by which 
sensitive and conscious life on this earth, the only life 
that has in itself any value, is made wholly dependent 
upon the vegetable kingdom for its existence. 



306 APPENDIX. 

APPENDIX B. 



The idea of Being stands by itself, and, as entering 
into all thought, requires further elucidation. Mere 
feeling, or sense impression, or instinctive tendency, is 
not thought. To think implies a thinker, and a rational 
thinker, to be, must know himself to be. That he should 
know himself to be enters into our very conception of 
a rational being, and he cannot affirm this to himself 
without having the idea of being in general. lie who 
says, I am, says virtually, I am a being. He thus does 
what is done in all predication. He puts the individual 
under a class, and so the generic idea is involved. If it 
be denied that the idea of Being in general is thus in- 
volved in the idea which the thinker must have of his 
own being, it is to be said further that to think is to 
judge, and that this idea is involved in the use of the 
verb to be as the copula in our judgments. No one can 
understand the propositions, I am, Gold is ductile, Snow 
is white, without having the general notion of Being as 
it is involved in the copula. 

But if the general idea of Being is thus implied in 
thought, is indeed a condition for it, how is it possible it 
should be given by thought ? This question it is diffi- 
cult to answer without supposing it to be innate, or, as 
I should prefer to say, connate. It would seem as if it 
must be elementary in the very first movements of a ra- 
tional intellect, as instinct is in the first movements of a 
creature governed by instinct. Accordingly, this is the 
view of it taken by Rosmini in his work on " The Origin 






APPENDIX. 307 

of Ideas." In the common view, the necessary ideas 
are grouped together. No one of them is properly in- 
nate, but by the constitution of the mind they are im- 
mediately and necessarily formed, when the occasion 
occurs. 

But according to Rosmini this one idea of Being, as 
necessarily involved in thought, is primitive and innate, 
while the others, though necessarily given, are not 
necessary to thought, and so are not, in the same sense, 
innate. 



APPENDIX C. 



We are now prepared to separate the necessary ideas 
and beliefs given by the Intellect alone, more clearly 
than they have been from the other mental furniture. 
This needs to be done. 

The ideas are generally called concepts, and are 
treated as such, but are wholly different from them in 
their origin and functions. A concept, as its name im- 
ports, is a gathering together. It is the result of ab- 
straction and generalization. But these ideas, as those 
of being, space, time, are simple, and are given at once 
without abstraction or generalization. These ideas, too, 
give rise, as concepts do not, to necessary truths and be- 
liefs, as that a body mast be in space, and an event in 
time. Of these truths the primitive form is indeed sin- 
gular ; a body must be in space, but the passage from 
this to the universal truth that all bodies must be in 



308 APPENDIX. 

space is by no generalization or induction in any proper 
sense of those words. It is immediate and necessary, 
and no experience or repetition of instances is needed 
to confirm its truth. It is to be said further that, while 
concepts are the subjects of our reasonings, these ideas 
and truths enter as elementary into all our reasonings. 
We conclude, then, that these ideas and truths are 
wholly apart from the processes of generalization and 
induction in any use of those terms that is not unusual 
and misleading. 

Again, if, as we may, we term the truths connected 
with these ideas intuitions, we need to put them in a 
separate class. As originating from the mind itself, they 
are wholly different from the intuitions of sense. They 
differ also from mathematical intuitions, as common and 
necessary to all men. One may live his lifetime with- 
out having it occur to him that two straight lines can- 
not enclose a space, but he must know that he exists, 
and continues to be the same person. 

Again, these ideas and beliefs must be distinguished 
from those necessary products of the mind when the In- 
tellect is combined with the Sensibility, or with the Sen- 
sibility and the Will. In the text the necessary products 
of the mind are divided into three classes. Of these the 
first differ from the others in that they are simple, and 
do not, like beauty and obligation, admit of modification 
by education or culture. The idea of cause, for exam- 
ple, which is placed in the third class, not because it is 
not given by the pure Intellect, but because it could be 
known as cause only through the will, is the same at 
one time as another. So of being, and personal iden- 
tity, and of resemblance. 



APPENDIX. 309 

Still further are these ideas removed from those high 
abstractions, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 
supposed by some, since the time of Plato, to be, in com- 
mon with them, ideas of the Reason. The True, the 
Beautiful, and the Good are not general ideas, since no 
individual can be brought under them. They are not 
given at once, or necessary to thought. They seem 
rather to be abstractions expressive of qualities or at- 
tributes in their most general application and highest 
degree. How they differ in kind from their opposites, 
the False, the Absurd, the Deformed, the Evil, or from 
others less high, as the Ridiculous, the Desirable, the 
Poetic, the Imaginative, or even from the white, used to 
express whiteness in its highest degree, it may be diffi- 
cult to say. But whatever they may be, they clearly 
imply long previous processes, and have little affinity with 
those simple and primitive ideas that enter into all our 
thinking. 



APPENDIX D. 



When the Lectures were delivered reference was 
made to Mr. Martineau at this point, and, according to 
the stenographic report, substantially as follows : — 

In speaking of obligation and of right, it is due to 
Mr. Martineau, and to myself as having come independ- 
ently to the same view with him, though I did not 
state it as well, that I should say a word respecting the 
position taken by him as related to my own. It was 



310 APPENDIX. 

said by me here in 1860, long before I had heard of Mr. 
Martineau, that " we shall readily see what that form of 
activity is to which responsibility ultimately attaches. 
It is not volition regarded simply as an executive act ; 
it is 'preference. It is that immanent act of preference 
in which we dispose of ourselves and on which charac- 
ter depends." * I said again, " We are not to eat from 
conscience, else why the appetite ? The affections are 
not from conscience, else they would not be original 
parts of our nature. It is not the office of conscience to 
supersede any of the natural principles of action, nor 
can it ever lead to action except as there are grounds 
for that action furnished by principles other than itself." a 
As I understand it, these two extracts — and many others 
might be given — involve the whole doctrine of Mr. Mar- 
tineau, except the doctrine of motives as higher and 
lower, and that is fully treated of in the " Lectures on 
Moral Science." The last extract makes Conscience a 
knowing with, in everything pertaining to Morals, as 
Consciousness is in everything pertaining to the whole 
mind. The same view I stated explicitly four years 
since, when I had not seen Mr. Martineau's review of 
Whewell. It is, indeed, fully implied in the passage 
quoted from " The Law of Love," in the eleventh lec- 
ture to which Dr. McCosh and others have objected. 

The view of Mr. Martineau is as follows. He says, 
* Every moral judgment is relative and involves a com- 
parison of two terms." .... "This fact, that every 
ethical decision is, in truth, a preference, an election of 
one act as higher than another, appears to us of funda- 

1 Lectures on Moral Science, page 168. 
t Id. page 221 



APPENDIX. 311 

mental importance in the analysis of our moral senti- 
ments." . . . . " Every action is right, which, in the pres- 
ence of a lower principle, follows a higher ; every action 
is wrong, which, in the presence of a higher principle, 
follows a lower." Further on he says, " The preferen- 
tial character attaching to all moral judgments is im- 
plied, and yet as it seems to us very inaccurately repre- 
sented by Butler In describing the constitution 

of our nature he presents to us, first of all, as springs of 
action, a system of ' particular passions ' and desires, 
such as the bodily appetencies, pity, anger, social affec- 
tion, each pursuing an end appropriate to itself; and 
then, as a supplementary and crowning spring of action, 
conscience, having also its own separate end, namely, 
right voluntary dispositions and actions. The collection 
of ends embraced by the former constitutes natural goody 
of which each ingredient in its turn is equally eligible : 
so that thus far our nature is a republic of equal princi- 
ples. The single additional end of conscience consti- 
tutes moral good, which has a natural right of suprem- 
acy over the other Now, for our own part, after 

the most diligent search, we cannot find within us this 
autocratic faculty, having its own private and para- 
mount end." 1 

Conscience, then, according to Mr. Martineau, never 
acts with reference to a single end, but always to decide 
the choice between two, each of which furnishes in itself 
a reason for action, and the higher of which, in virtue of 
its being higher, furnishes the ground of approval and 
of impulse. This is precisely what I said in the passage 
already quoted. " No man can be under obligation to 
do an act morally right, for which there is not a reason 
1 Jievkw of Whewell. 



312 APPENDIX. 

besides its being right, and on the ground of which it is 
right." Conscience has no separate object, as the right, 
with reference to which it acts. Its office is to affirm 
obligation to choose a higher end when it comes into 
competition with a lower one, which higher end is not 
presented by the Conscience, but by some form of the 
Sensibility. It must be found in some form of the good 
of beings capable of good ; and if there were no beings 
capable of good through a Sensibility, there could be none 
capable of goodness through the Will. What I say, there- 
fore, is not merely that the Will is dependent on the Sen- 
sibility for its motives in moral action, but that the Moral 
Nature itself is conditioned upon it, and inconceivable 
without it. 

With a high admiration for Mr. Martineau, I do not 
agree with him on some points. I do not believe, as 
he seems to, that wisdom and holiness are attributes of 
the Divine Being as hardness is the attribute of a stone. 
As will be seen further on, I do not agree with him in 
relation to the precise office of conscience, and I believe, 
and shall endeavor to show, that we are not left to the 
guidance of instinct alone in deciding which of our prin- 
ciples of action are higher and which are lower. 



EXPLANATION OF THE DIAGRAM. 



The whole system and process of the lectures 
is given in the Diagram. The process begins with 
Analysis, or Separation. Man is first separated 
from all other objects and beings ; and, by a law 
which is found to make the structure of the uni- 
verse below him pyramidal, he is placed at their 
head. He is so as gathering into himself every- 
thing which they possess, with something added. 

The place of man being thus found, we separate 
the body from the mind. As a condition for the 
mind we examine the body first, separating it into 
its different parts by Anatomy ; and into its dif- 
ferent systems as functional, by Physiology ; the 
order of the systems being determined by the 
same law that determines the order of the forces 
of nature. Of these forces we find the products 
when they act according to their law. 

Having examined the parts and functions of the 
body, we pass to the Mind. That we divide into 
the Intellect, the Sensibility, and the Will, and 
proceed to examine them in their order. 

We first take the Intellect as conditional for the 



314 EXPLANATION OF THE DIAGRAM. 

others, and represent that as acting alone, by a 
single vertical line. Before this we suppose ob- 
jects to be presented in front, and necessary ideas 
to be originated within it, which are represented 
as thrown back of the line. We thus furnish the 
Intellect, so far as that can be done acting by it- 
self, through the Presentative and the Intuitive 
Powers. We then consider the Representative 
Powers, and then the Elaborative, dividing them 
into their parts and finding their legitimate prod- 
ucts. 

From the Intellect we pass to the Sensibility as 
conditioned upon it. As thus conditioned the two 
must act together, and we therefore represent 
them by two lines united. We then examine the 
forms, the processes, and the products of the two 
united, as we had before those of the Intellect 
singly. 

We next take the Will. And because the Will 
is conditioned upon the other two, we represent 
them by three lines united, and inquire as before 
for the contingent and the necessary processes and 
products from their combination. This brings us 
up to the region of Personality. It constitutes 
the man. 

The man being constituted, we pass to an en- 
tirely different region. The tree is grown ; it is 
now to bear fruit. The end of the man is free 
rational choice and action under the government 
of God, with the results of such choice and action. 



EXPLANATION OF THE DIAGRAM. 315 

But &s Choice must involve an alternative, the 
column will now divide itself into two branches ; 
and, as we had, up to the point of choice, nature 
and necessity, and so science, so now we have 
these after Choice, with results differing according 
to that. 

In connection with these operations we have 
Consciousness ; and this is so written as to indi- 
cate its connection with them all. In connection 
with moral operations we have also Conscience, 
and this is written in the same way. 



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